


The Aphanes

by doctorcolubra



Series: White Sky [1]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Canadian Politics, Canon Disabled Character, Coming of Age, Depression, Disability, Disabled Character, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mutant Politics, Recovery, Social Anxiety, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-04 16:29:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 71,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4144677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorcolubra/pseuds/doctorcolubra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles is a psychologist, but what is it like to actually get therapy from him?  When a troubled young mutant from Ottawa is referred to Westchester, Charles has to face up to his own limitations and find a way to reach through the boy's defences. Meanwhile, tensions rise up north as a small anti-mutant group begins to get violent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Psychiatric Referral

**Author's Note:**

> "Aphanes. Greek, adj. Unseen, invisible; hidden, secret; vanished; uncertain, unknown; insignificant, obscure."
> 
> This story (a short novel) was originally serialised on my website back in 2005. I know. It got some kind recs from Minisinoo and Eve Tushnet, so if you remember it at all, that's why. The old website is long gone and so is the computer I wrote this on, but I rescued the chapters from archive.org. I made a lot of edits, massaged the dialogue, and tried to make the technology sound current. (The original mentioned a Discman, and people cared more about newspapers back then.) But it's the same story.
> 
> I wanted to write about invisibility, which seemed tied to being forgotten, isolated, unloved. Writing about mental illness followed naturally from that, and I drew on my own experiences in the mental health system. What emerged over time was a story about doctors and patients, and fathers and sons.
> 
> When I label this as X-Men moviefic, pretty much all I mean is "I'm totally picturing Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier." It's a story that takes place in the X-Men universe, and canon's not really that important. Most of the characters are original, and a lot of the action takes place in Canada. Marvel has never done Canada well, so I felt free to make up whatever sounded plausible.
> 
> The story deals with mental illness, and there is a STRONG trigger warning for suicidal thoughts and actions. Violence in chapter 10. Religion comes up a lot. Zero romance.
> 
> I came back to this story after ten years because it's still very close to my heart, and I hope you like it too.

_I sometimes think that shame,_  
_mere awkward, senseless shame,_  
_does as much towards preventing good acts_  
_and straightforward happiness_  
_as any of our vices do._  
—C.S. Lewis, _A Grief Observed_

St. Rita's Residence was close to the Experimental Farm, a government agricultural research project that gave Ottawa a flat green heart of tidy fields in the middle of the city, high-rises standing guard around the plots of soybeans, winter wheat, and barley. A few streets away, St. Rita's took up a city block, rows of pines and cedar around its fences for privacy. It looked like a private school, maybe, dark bricks with some ugly angular roofs and windows that suggested it had been built in the '70s. It stood on a street scattered with yellow leaves, stuck there wet and bright against the rain-black asphalt. In the smoked-glass windshield of the rental car, the leaves from above were reflected again, and two of them drifted down to land between the wiper blades in the time that it took for Jean to help Charles out of the front seat and into his waiting wheelchair. She was able to use telekinesis to make the process more dignified, since there was no one around to get alarmed.

Charles was wondering if St. Rita's neighbours actually got alarmed by things like that, whether they were anxious NIMBY types or whether proximity had made them get used to the presence of mutants. The other houses on the street were small, mid-century white clapboard things, most of them immaculate, the leaves raked up and waiting at the curb in orange bags with Jack-o-lantern faces on them. Ontario's red ensign flag hung limply on a diagonal pole mounted on one of the porch posts. At the end of one long driveway, a cabin cruiser sat on a trailer cozied under a blue tarp, with an orange-and-black FOR SALE sign perched on top.

"Happy people, do you think?" Charles asked Jean as she flipped out the footrests on his chair for him, and he moved his own right leg over to get his weight settled the way he liked it. "Good neighbours?"

"I hope so. Seems quiet, anyway," Jean said, straightening up and buttoning her jacket. "No angry signs on the lawns for the People's Front for Judaea, like we were seeing on the way in."

The signs had been clustered around stop signs and fences here and there throughout the city, and some prominently placed on lawns: _Canadian Front for Humanity, Human Liberation, Human and Proud, We Stand for Safe Streets._ Some were weirdly cheerful or quippy: _Clean Genes!_ one bragged, while another read _No Pesticides - this lawn is safe for animals and real humans._

The gate had a camera prominently perched on the fencepost and a few warning signs in English and French, but it wasn't locked. Charles and Jean passed through the wet parking lot and up the ramp to the front doors, and these were locked. Jean had to knock on the glass and wave before the security guard inside looked up from his newspaper and pressed the button to let them in, the door buzzing.

When the guard summoned him, Dr. Gilles Visineau came down the hall to meet them. He wore a Roman collar with traditional blacks, no blue or pale grey clerical shirt to look more approachable. He and Charles had met two years ago at a big North American conference about mutation and mental health, and they hadn't exactly hit it off famously, but it was a small field and you had to play nice with colleagues. "Dr. Xavier, Dr. Grey, I'm so glad you made it -- how was your flight? From JFK, that's not too long, is it?"

"Not bad at all, it was super short," Jean said with a smile, shaking his hand. "Barely enough time for a movie. And so long as I shell out for the extra legroom I'm fine."

"Customs and security are getting to be more distressing than being in the air," Charles said, as neutrally as he could; known mutants faced extra screening, which affected Jean but not him. "But it wasn't bad at all, on the whole. I was happy to come see your facility, and I'm interested to meet your patient -- how's he doing today?"

Visineau lifted his shoulders in a shrug, an uncomfortable movement as if he were trying to dislodge something heavy or itchy from his back. "Not too bad, not too bad. From what the morning nurse told me. Hopefully you'll get to actually see him this time. I wish that Skype had worked for feeling out a rapport, without you having to come all the way here, but...well. Hoped it would work, wasn't surprised when it didn't."

A month ago, Dr. Visineau had put out some feelers, emailing Charles with a request for advice on treating one of his residents. Charles rather liked being asked for an opinion, especially since Visineau had previously seemed -- well, smug. Convinced that he understood how to treat mutants, without being one. Not in any hurry to listen to the experiences of actual mutant workers in mental health. Visineau asking for a consult felt like a concession in an argument they hadn't even been having. Charles agreed to take a look at the case, and they'd exchanged a flurry of paperwork, consent and release forms.

> Joel McCree, 17, was referred to me by his family physician shortly after his mutation manifested 2 years ago. He was seen at the clinic as an outpatient for 8 months before a suicide attempt necessitated inpatient care with the residential program. His powers are invisibility (poor control) and a better-controlled phasing power, similar to that of the anonymous student you described in your last article for the _American Journal of Mutant Psychology._ Those of my students with telepathic powers report that he is insensible to them while in his invisible state.
> 
> Joel suffers from severe depression, social anxiety, and generalised anxiety. He is also epileptic, as a result of surviving meningitis in childhood. He is resistant to therapy and medications have had limited effect. Since his arrival at St. Rita's, his suicidal ideations have worsened and the therapeutic alliance has broken down. Due to his powers, guaranteeing his physical safety here is impossible. If you are amenable, I would like to explore the possibility of referral to your program in New York.

The boy's file had a few features that caught Charles' interest. Unlike Kitty Pryde, his phasing ability never seemed to cause falls through beds or upper floors, which was interesting. Partial immunity to telepathy was an intriguing side effect too, and learning more about that could expand their knowledge of how telepathy worked in the first place. 

A referral didn't sound like a bad idea either, but Charles hadn't been able to speak with Joel personally. Skype had been a total failure, since the camera couldn't pick up his presence at all. "He's too anxious on the phone," Visineau said, leading them down a corridor. "Not even in the sense of, 'oh, try some mindfulness techniques.' He gets uncomfortable and boom, he disappears."

"But face to face is better?" Jean said, following at the Professor's side.

"I'm not sure I'd say better. Face to face is _possible_ , let's put it that way. We'll try today and tomorrow -- if that's all right with you -- but if he won't appear at all then we might as well consider this a dead end."

"We can stay until Thursday," Charles said. "That gives us a few opportunities to catch him on a good day. Are his parents able to meet with us too?"

" _Are_ they," said Visineau with a snort. "His parents have been at my heels all month, they really want this referral. His father has a busy schedule, but they'll make the time for you."

"Pretty stable home, though, right?" said Jean. "From what I saw in the file. Supportive of mutants, engaged in his care?"

Visineau nodded. "Very supportive. His father lost his seat in Parliament because he was fighting for the mutant issue, actually, which was before Joel even manifested. When the Liberals came back swinging in the last election, his father got appointed to the Senate as a consolation prize, which is less power but more security. And he's still been pushing mutant issues from there. Joel's mother works in special needs education, so you really couldn't ask for parents who are in a better position."

Charles wanted to be impressed and reassured by that, but he thought there was something in the priest's tone that invited scepticism. _You really couldn't ask...and yet..._ "Well. That's all to the good. The mood disorder makes sense, especially when it's co-morbid with epilepsy. And social isolation must factor in, even in a facility with other mutant patients."

"He has opportunities to interact with other mutants. He just...isn't there yet. I order group therapy, he doesn't show up. I try to pair him with other patients one on one for activities, he disappears for those too. We have serious talks about treatment goals and resistance, and he denies that he's being resistant. I can't prove that he's deliberately disappearing, but he's gone for so much of the time that I'm not sure it matters whether he's doing it on purpose or not. He's clearly too anxious to participate in -- in anything, one way or the other. He's missing his own life," Visineau added, more quietly.

"Is it so bad to miss out on being seventeen?" Jean said with a wry little smile. "It's not a very good year for everyone."

It got a chuckle out of Visineau. "Maybe. But I don't think he's tried enough to know if he likes being seventeen."

"I think," said Charles, "that it does help being with other mutant patients. But I think it would help more to have mutant staff. You and your people here are baseline humans, and as committed as you are to helping mutants, you're missing a vital piece of the experiential puzzle. Being able to see healthy adult mutants -- living productive lives -- would be very encouraging."

"Of course, which is why I hoped you could take him on. But it's not as though we're turning mutant staff away here at St. Rita's. There aren't very many in the field, they don't apply, so what am I supposed to do?" Visineau sounded nettled. "I think it's just as important to demonstrate that baseline humans aren't the enemy, that we want to help. I'm really not wild about drawing distinctions between humans and mutants, especially not in that language. We are all human."

"So we are, but a fairly major difference does exist. We must name it." _Homo superior_ , Charles thought as he always did, Erik's voice in his memory. It wasn't a good term, and he didn't use it, but it was out there nonetheless. "Refusing to name something doesn't make it go away."

"No one is trying to erase that. That's not what St. Rita's is about," said Visineau wearily. "We just want a community."

They passed through a couple of sets of locked doors, and signed in through security. Charles and Jean were issued red plastic visitor passes, and it was nice to see that the security staff looked bored. Not tense, not threatened, not uncomfortable, just bored. That was more convincing than anything Visineau said. St. Rita's wasn't a place where the staff expected trouble.

On the boys' ward, things were quiet. An occupational therapy session was going on in one room, and through the windowed wall Charles caught a glimpse of mutant teenagers in school uniforms, working on art projects. Clay bowls and birds, sleeves rolled up, a few smiles. 

Jean was keeping her head up, but her hands were balled up in foetal fists at her sides -- Charles could feel that she was working hard on keeping her mental walls up. So was he, really. 

Visineau stopped at a door at the end of the hall and knocked. No answer. He sighed, and said something inquiring in French. Again no answer. " _Eh bien_ , he's probably there," he said to Charles and Jean. "There's no way to tell, so I take it on faith. _Praestet fides supplementum..._ "

"'Faith for all defects supplying, where the feeble senses fail,'" Charles said, quoting the traditional English translation of the line. "You sound like you're being a bit facetious -- you really don't know if he's even there?"

"From what he's told me, I honestly don't think he would just leave. He's an obedient kid, he does what he's told and he doesn't like to buck authority. Passive, really. Some kids who had this power would use it to spy on the girls' washrooms, some would just walk out the door and never come back, but him -- I don't think so. I might be wrong," Visineau allowed. "But this is why I was glad to have Dr. Grey here to consult. A powerful telepath might be able to detect what my patients here can't."

"It's possible," Jean said, not glancing over at Charles. "I mean, I'm picking up nada right now, but we'll see what we can see. Or hear, or feel. Are we good to go in?"

"I think so. Shall I give you some elbow room? I'll be at the nursing station at the end of the hall."

"Very good, thank you," said Charles, and he pushed open the door to let himself inside the room.

It was a little more homelike than a hospital room, but not as personal as a dorm. There was one window, looking out into the pines that lined the property, with switch-operated blinds within the panels of glass -- no strings or cables. The desk in the corner was stacked with books, and Charles cruised his chair over to glance at them. Dostoevsky was on top, _The Brothers Karamazov._ Maybe it was for school, or maybe the boy could relate to a famously epileptic author. The bed was unmade, piled with homemade quilts and afghans, more evidence of relatives who cared. 

Charles relaxed his mental shields and opened his awareness, gently searching for another presence. He could feel Jean doing the same, her mind's movements quicker than his, fast radar-like sweeps -- she was nervous. She'd been in places like this before, and not (in those days) as a doctor. 

"Anything?" she murmured to him, still standing with her hand on the doorframe. "I don't want to just walk in, I'm afraid I'll walk through him and I won't even know."

"Oh, I'm sure I already have," Charles said, still reaching. He felt nothing. If he hadn't known, he would have confidently said the room was empty. "But let's not talk as if he isn't here. --Joel, I expect you've already gathered this, but I'm Professor Charles Xavier. Dr. Visineau has told you about me and vice versa. I'm very sorry we weren't able to speak on the phone, or over Skype, but many people with social anxiety find that sort of thing difficult."

Silence.

"This is my colleague, Dr. Jean Grey. She's not a psychiatrist, she's a research physician, but she's not here in that capacity. I brought her with me because when I first met her, she was in a residential facility not so different from this one. She's a mutant, like you," Charles said. "And like me."

No one, there was no one there. They were talking to themselves. Not a breath, not a thought. How could he be so silent, if he was there? Why didn't he say something? Why _couldn't_ he say something?

"We'd like to talk to you, if you don't mind," Jean said, her eyes tracking through the room, looking for any sign of life. "Can you make yourself visible for us?"

A page on the deck rustled. It was so slight that Charles thought he'd imagined it, or that it was just a random air current from the ceiling vent, but suddenly he saw a flicker of movement right in front of his face and he started, powering his chair backward until its wheels bumped the edge of the bed.

But the movement was just a white index card, fluttering to the floor. Jean came forward to pick it up, and then handed it to Charles.

The card looked old, its edges furred by handling, a little warped from moisture. On it was written:

Today I am having trouble speaking and staying solid.  
Please be patient.

A teacher had made it for him, probably -- the handwriting was precise and elegant. Charles recalled a reference to "cards" in the file sent from Dr. Visineau. Joel used them to communicate, the file said, but only sometimes. Other times, talking to the empty space had absolutely no effect. It was just as if he were dead, or unconscious. _Incommunicado._

"Okay, Joel, thanks for letting us know," Jean said softly to the air. "We'll wait until you're able to talk. There's no hurry."

They waited for what felt like a very long time, although the clock on the bedside table said it was only a few minutes. It was hard not to look nervous, not to fidget or stare, but they made the effort, knowing that if they looked impatient that it would only make Joel more skittish. Jean made some small talk with the Professor, only a little awkward, because she felt like an expectant silence was only going to feel worse. She had been shy once too; she knew that much.

Then, like a Polaroid developing, a figure faded into view by the window. Jean forgot what she was saying, her sentence trailing off.

He was thin, painfully thin, and the frayed black sweater he wore showed a deep hollow above his collarbone. Probably the victim of a recent growth spurt, gangly and stoop-shouldered.  He was gingery, freckles everywhere like the translucent speckles on a wild bird’s eggshell, and his mouth was a bit too wide for his face.  His eyes were a pale hazel that was a little unnerving, a light-catching colour, clear and clean -- Charles was used to seeing that sort of expression in other telepaths, an excess of vision. 

And right away, as if a switch had been flicked on, Charles could hear his thoughts. He felt the boy's choking nervousness, heard him thinking: _don't fuck this up, don't fuck this up, not any more than you have already, they already hate you but you have to say something, just say something, it isn't hard._ He had a loud mental "voice", thoughts pouring by at a fever pitch. His hands and bare toes were clenched, knuckles white.

"I'm sorry," he said, almost the way other people might say hello.

"I don't know what for," said Charles, smiling. "It's wonderful to see you. So it seems that you do have some control over your powers--"

"No," Joel interrupted, sounding alarmed. "Whoa, no, don't get the wrong idea here. I can't -- I can't do it for long." He nearly faded again, but grabbed a handful of the bed covers frantically, and his outline became sharp once more. "It's hard. When it's a bad day it's hard, I'm sorry."

"Well, I'd be very interested in exploring some control techniques with you, if you do choose to work with me. It might seem unlikely to you now, but we've had success with quite a number of mutants with very different powers. We even have a student who can phase through matter, although I suspect your abilities don't work the same way."

"Um..." Joel eased himself down to sit on the bed, moving like someone trying not to slip on an icy sidewalk. "Yeah, I mean -- sorry, can I -- what day is it?"

"It's Monday," said Jean. "The twelfth of October. We heard that your nurse thought you were doing okay this morning, was she wrong? Bad intel?"

"It's still Monday?"

"Still. Do you get disoriented sometimes?"

He nodded, flushing a dark red, and took a few seconds to gather his thoughts. "Okay -- wow, I guess it's not a bad day, then. Shows what I know. Yeah, I was gonna say...I'm really sorry about the Skype thing, sir, I really tried hard but cameras are tough for me. I have to be a hundred percent there, and I just...get really nervous--"

"I'm not worried at all about the Skype issue, Joel," Charles said. "We're here now in the flesh, aren't we? How do you feel about the prospect of leaving St. Rita's?"

Joel hesitated, then said, "Yeah, like...yeah. Everyone seems to think it's a good idea."

"What do you think?"

"I don't know."

"You'd rather stay here?"

"No. Sorry." It had just been an automatic _I don't know_ , Charles thought, and waited for Joel to come up with a real answer. He hadn't made eye contact with either of them yet. "I want to...they can't help me here," he said finally, his voice barely more than a murmur. "They're done trying, it's run its course. It's just -- it's not working here. It happens."

"Yeah, it does happen like that sometimes," Jean said. She started to move closer but aborted it when she saw him tense up and fade at the edges. "Your chart says you've been around, huh? Different hospitals, different doctors. I was the same way, my parents tried everything. You know it's not your fault, right? It's just how the system is. Sometimes things just don't click."

"Uh-huh."

"It's a jump, going from here to Westchester, but I do think it would be beneficial. Your parents seem to agree," said Charles. 

"Yeah."

"We really might be able to make some progress there that couldn't be made here. Studying your powers, especially. Which I know might sound a bit frightening," Charles went on, although he couldn't differentiate whether the currents of fear and dread in Joel's thoughts were general or specific. Was he afraid of the prospect of being tested, or just afraid of this conversation? "My school is run by and for mutants. It's not primarily a clinical setting -- I'm actually not in the habit of taking patients these days, but Dr. Visineau asked and I was interested. It's a school for gifted children, exactly as it says on the sign. Not patients, not cases, not problems. Children who need to learn how to embrace their gifts. My hope is that it's an environment that will support recovery while giving you the opportunity to learn about your abilities. And to learn history, physics, English..."

The only reaction he got was an unspoken wave of weary apathy, under the crackle of anxiety. "Sure, yeah. That sounds...good."

"Joel, when was the last time you ate something?" Jean asked. "Not to be invasive here, but I'm a telepath, some of that comes with the territory. You feel really tired and hungry to me. Kinda rolling off you in waves. Do you miss meals a lot?"

"Sorry. Um, yeah, I do."

"Okay. Can I talk you into coming with us to the cafeteria? Keep your blood sugar up?"

He shifted his weight on the bed, still looking uncomfortable. "Okay. Let me get my shoes."

When he had his shoes on, he picked up the empty water bottle from the bedside table and tried to follow Jean and Charles to the door...then he abruptly disappeared. The water bottle also disappeared, then reappeared as it fell to the floor and bounced on the carpet. Charles remembered Dr. Visineau's notes -- small objects close to Joel's body, including clothes, became invisible with the rest of him, while larger, heavier things tended to phase through and become visible once they passed out of the field. It was why the trick with the index cards worked, when it did work.

More jarring for Charles was the sudden telepathic silence, the knowledge that he was watched but could not sense the watcher. 

Suppressing her discomfort, Jean picked the water bottle up and said, "Don't worry, just come with us, okay? You might be able to get solid again once you're there. The Professor will help you."

Charles, for once, wasn't so sure he could.

* * *

"Frankly, I'm surprised that St. Rita's was able to take care of him as long as they did." Senator Jim McCree had made time to see Charles and Jean in his office in the Victoria Building, opposite Parliament Hill. It was a handsome old Art Deco building of dark red brick with white stone cornices around the roof, less imposing than the Gothic arches and steeples of the Parliament buildings themselves. The Senator's office was small and stuffed with books, reassuringly academic. He was a tall, rangy man in his early sixties; his son had been born late, his Isaac. His hair was grey but his eyebrows were still dark, his face craggy and patrician, with a long nose and a stubborn chin.

He was eating his lunch, spearing the vegetables of his salad with a plastic fork as he spoke. "When he first went there, it was hard. Knowing that no matter how much we wanted to, we couldn't help Joel with his problems. But we believed that he was getting the kind of care he needed. Now it seems an awful lot like Father Gilles just quit on him. You heard about that, right? One way or another, Joel's out the door of that place at the end of the month, because Father Gilles decided that treatment's not working. Okay, I agree, it's not. We know it's logical for people to stop banging their heads against the wall at some point; we understand that. But it's easy to feel abandoned, in a case like this."

"I can certainly understand your feelings," said Charles, who'd been offered a cup of tea by an assistant when he came in. To his surprise, he'd got it in a china cup instead of styrofoam. "Dr. Visineau did everything he could. I have no doubt of that. But he believes that the traditional models are sufficient for treating mutant children with mental problems. Except when they aren't."

"Really." A moment of ice, there -- the Senator could criticise Visineau, but Charles couldn't.

"He's in good company with that belief," Charles backtracked, allowing a hint of diplomatic irony in his voice, to show that he had registered Senator McCree's disapproval and was not cowed. "But I don't agree with him. To only try medication and talk therapy is not enough, not for mutant children. Joel has a very significant additional factor complicating his disease. I would be surprised if his mutation is the cause of it, but it's not helping. My first impression is that it's serving him as a coping mechanism, but that's not a healthy use of his ability. Dr. Visineau can't advise him very much on learning to control it, because he's never had to control a mutation himself and there's no framework for teaching it. On this subject, there's no substitute for experience."

"Listen, this all makes perfect sense to me," Senator McCree said, gesturing with the plastic fork. The ice was gone and he seemed to have lost interest in monitoring Charles for criticisms of St. Rita's. "And let's be realistic here, the situation we have doesn't work. Joel is not getting better. I'm not so sure he isn't getting worse. I keep hearing phrases like 'suicidal ideation' whenever I go talk to Father Gilles, and when I ask what the plan is to keep my son safe, he doesn't know. Like I applaud his honesty, sure, thanks for not lying and saying you do know when you don't. But that means St. Rita's can't handle the job. What are they going to do if he decides he's going to walk off the grounds and go looking for a bridge? Nothing. Right? So what are _you_ going to do?"

"After we've done some tests, I think we'll have some fresh ideas about medication," Jean said. "We have data and methods that aren't accessible to anyone else, and I think we can come up with a cocktail that will be better at keeping him solid--"

"Not you personally, though, right?" Mr. McCree interrupted. "I understand you don't work at the school, is that correct?"

"No, my area of research is in genetics. I'm a postdoctoral fellow at Sinai, so I'm in the city a lot. But the guy who _would_ be testing and working with Joel on this question is a dear friend of mine, Hank McCoy. He's even smarter than me, if you can believe it." Jean smiled, a cajoling smile: _come on, go ahead and like us._ "You're sceptical, Senator, and you should be. You've got every right to ask how treatment is going to be better with us. But we wouldn't have come if we didn't believe it would be."

"Oh, you've got Dr. McCoy in-house there?" said Mr. McCree, his chair squeaking as he tilted it backward, still eating.

"You've heard of him, huh? That was a good 'oh.'"

 _"Ohhhh..."_ The Senator smiled, drawing it out as if he'd just understood the secrets of the universe. "Yeah, I've heard of Dr. McCoy. I'm not a scientist, but mutation is my pet issue, so...okay, yeah, I'm able to believe that someone of that calibre could figure something out that we couldn't in Ottawa. And obviously Dr. Xavier is a legend, we all know that. I'm not deliberately being difficult, guys. I'm being worried, because my kid's not okay. I want to hear you tell me that you've got plans and ideas, because I haven't been hearing that from other places. Other places tell me they're going to try the same thing the last twenty places tried. And I tell them, look, keep my kid alive. Ideally make him feel better, but even if all you can do is take my money and keep him alive..."

"We do have plans and ideas. We have hope, Senator. That's really what you're asking about, isn't it?" said Charles. "The social environment will be better. Staff who understand mutation from the inside out. A scientist who's top in his field is keen to give your son his personal attention. And while we're doing some benevolent boasting here, I'm not short on accomplishments myself. You probably know the lightbulb joke about psychotherapists."

"'Only one, but it has to really want to change.'" Mr. McCree nodded, herding a crouton from the edge of the bowl with his fork. "Yup, heard it."

"That really is the one thing needful. We provide what he needs to grow, to heal, to recover, and he does the heavy lifting himself. I think we can put the right tools in his hands."

"All right. Well, if you got some kind of a grudging yes out of Joel, then we'll get him down there to Westchester. Lillian's already on board, she's been excited about this. I just wanted to clap eyes on you myself." Mr. McCree shrugged. "As if you can tell anything by looking, but you know what it's like." The assistant appeared in the doorway again. "Are we out of time?"

"Ten minutes until your appointment with Marcel Lauzon, yeah," said the assistant. "Sorry, guys."

Mr. McCree sighed. "My salad's gonna wilt. Okay, I guess I used up my budgeted parental fussing time. In conclusion, Professor, I'm trusting you with my baby here. I've only got one, no backups. Just make sure I get him back when you're done, okay?"

Charles smiled. "We'll take good care of your child, Senator."

On the way out of the building, Jean said, "He's a good guy, I think. I mean, he's a politician, so I wasn't sure at first. But I think he is."

"He loves his son," Charles agreed. And he was inclined to cut the man miles of slack for that alone -- it was such a welcome change from frightened parents who were outraged that fate had not given them a "normal" child; from the absent or abusive parents of runaways; from the missing parents of bereaved or abandoned children who, like Scott and so many others, had been left behind in a system that could offer little help.

And yet even a loving father, even a family that had both money and power, was not enough to make you safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a note for Americans here: in Canada, Senators are appointed by the Prime Minister, not elected. It's a weird combo of the U.S. Senate and the U.K. House of Lords -- you're appointed for life, after making nice with the PM for long enough, but you don't have a whole lot of power. You can veto bills that the House of Commons puts through, but not introduce any yourself. It's sort of an extra retirement office that some people get when the PM wants to "stuff the Senate" (i.e., fill it with people who agree with him, in order to pass the measures he cares about). So that means Joel's dad was an important guy at some point, but now he's in decline; in the U.S. a Senator would be on his way up.


	2. Underneath the Ice

_Now in the arctic night_  
_I can almost suppose you did not die,_  
_But are somewhere walking between_  
_The icons of ice, pensively_  
_like a priest,_  
_Wrapped in the cold holiness of snow,_  
_of your own memory._  
—Gwendolyn MacEwen, _Terror and Erebus_  


Joel didn't do very well on planes -- confined space, close quarters, strangers, nope. A plane full of strangers was a really bad place to suddenly disappear. He hadn't been expecting Professor Xavier to solve that problem with a private jet. _Americans get shit done._ But even with (or because of) the generosity of that gesture, Joel slipped under into invisibility on the plane and didn't emerge again until they were landing at the school. The passage of time shocked him, as it so often did. He had tried, really tried to fight his way out of the fog and couldn't do it.

It was impossible, sometimes, like trying to remember the answer to a hard question on a test. You knew, _knew_ that you had learned the answer, that it was lurking somewhere in your brain, that it was desperately important, that everyone expected it, that there was no reason not to know -- and yet there was nothing to grasp at or hold onto. Being invisible was as easy as forgetting.

And in the bottom of that forgetting place, it was as if his brain didn't work in the usual way. Light couldn't reach his eyes, sound waves passed right through him. He couldn't see anything but whiteness, couldn't feel his body, couldn't hear properly. Voices, sometimes; hearing was the last sense to go, and he heard voices as if he were half-asleep, and everything seemed wrapped in wool, or snow. Underneath the ice. He remembered the felt-board pictures from school of all the animals that hibernated: bears in dens, fish still awake under the ice, the frogs and turtles buried in mud. That thought in particular weirded him out as a kid -- being buried in mud, asleep, under the water and under the ice. But that was how it felt, now, when he went under to the bottom. The whiteness was so thick it held him immobile, in a stupor he couldn't break.

The kids at St. Rita's had all thought that he must walk through the walls and sneak around the city while he was invisible, but unfortunately, it wasn't true. Well, okay, once he had gone downtown and slipped into a movie theatre. And had a panic attack and never did it again, which made the whole thing a special shade of sad. But mostly, when he was at the bottom, he just sat in his room, staring at nothing, unable to move, barely able to think. The state could last for days, and Joel was usually violently ill when he finally emerged from those marathon invisibility sessions. Hungry. Exhausted. Disoriented.

People got angry with him -- teachers, doctors and nurses, his own parents. Everyone knew how easily he crumbled, so they tried to hide it, but Joel could hear it in the things they said to him: _I wish you wouldn't do that while I'm talking. You have to take better care of yourself. You're resisting therapy by withdrawing like that._

Father Gilles said Joel had more control than he let on, that he must be getting some benefit from disappearing all the time. Joel thought that the payoff, if there was one, had to be as intangible as he was. To not be seen or felt, or even heard, was only good if you didn't need anything, if you weren't scared or alone or bored. Bored, that was a big one, although it seemed so petty. But when you couldn't even read because your hands passed through the books, because you were struggling to see the letters...boredom hurt.

The trip to Westchester passed in the whiteness, sleep and waking reality merging together as he overheard the doctor and the professor talking together. Sometimes it seemed like they were addressing him, but he couldn't answer. He dreamed that he fell through the plane and was speeding toward the earth, but woke up before he could find out if he would die on impact or just pass through the ground itself. That sort of thing never happened in real life. _Thank God that it doesn't,_ Father Gilles used to say. _Why do you think that is?_

Joel didn't know. He didn't know how he was supposed to speculate. But you had to have weight to fall, you had to have a body. You had to be something rather than nothing.

Coming out of it usually just kind of happened. Reality took shape around him, like a sentence you read in a textbook and understand only after staring at it for a minute or two. He often woke up in weird places, but wearing the seatbelt on the jet had spared him that. _Maybe I should just have seatbelts put on everything,_ he thought blearily.

"You look beat, kiddo," Dr. Grey said when they arrived at the school. "Come on, we'll get you settled in your room and you can get some proper sleep."

* * *

The room was bigger than the room at St. Rita's, which he'd started thinking of as _home_. His actual home was just _the house_ , a house he loved and was ashamed of. _I live in uhhhh Rockcliffe Park_ , he would mumble when asked. A neighbourhood full of embassies, and in fact he lived around the corner from the Papal Nuncio, riding his bike past the huge manor's stone gatehouse with the device of St. Peter's keys over the arch. But there were woods there, wide yards full of trees shrouding every big-fucking-deal house, perched on the cliffs over the Ottawa River. He liked the woods. All that was a long way away now, and he'd been living at St. Rita's for so long that he felt like a guest when he did go back to _the house_.

So this was another room, and he always liked seeing rooms at this stage: an empty, unspoiled space. Tidy desk, untouched bed, blank walls. He hadn't had a chance yet to feel like a prisoner here. Nothing had gone wrong yet in this room. 

"Usually we have kids room together," Dr. Grey was saying as she showed him the thermostat, the pile of extra blankets, and unnecessarily, the closet. "This one's a private, obviously, because we don't want you to feel uncomfortable. But if you're here for a few months and you get friendly with some other kids, we can switch the arrangements around -- it's nice rooming with a friend."

Joel badly wanted to say _I can totally handle rooming with other people,_ but he couldn't. And everyone knew it. They had tried it at St. Rita's, and the stress caused a weird episode of paranoia that verged on the psychotic, but Joel was convinced that if he just tried harder, he'd be able to avoid that. No one else agreed.

From the window, he could see the pasture -- horses, too. "This is pretty," he said absently.

"We have riding lessons too, if you're interested -- mmph. Sorry," Dr. Grey said, grimacing. "Uncontrolled seizure disorder doesn't go with riding large animals, I should have remembered. But seriously, there's lots of stuff to do. You'll find something. Dinner's at seven tonight, but I'll get one of the students to call you, in case you fall asleep."

No escaping that, then.

"Are you okay eating with other people? I guarantee no one will think you're weird here, if you're worried about that."

"I'm not. It isn't that."

"What is it?" Dr. Grey sat down in the chair by the bed, as if ready for a long talk, and that was the last thing Joel needed. It was too much, just too much for right now. Even kindness was too heavy. He needed to be alone just to recover from all this talking and meeting and shaking hands, and Dr. Grey wasn't leaving and it was too rude to ask her to, and if she didn't stop (not really staring but) _looking_ , Joel was going to completely come apart.

The fog was threatening him, and he saw his own hands becoming indistinct like a TV picture in bad weather, someplace out in the boonies that still had an antenna. Losing his signal. "I'm really okay, honest. I just need some sleep, and I think--"

"Okay. Just relax, I'll leave you to it. Dr. McCoy's gonna want to do some tests sometime this week, whenever he's ready. And then we'll be on our way." Dr. Grey smiled, and she got up to leave. "I know you'll like working with the Professor, too. He really listens."

"I know," he said. Stupid response, when he didn't know any of these people yet, but he had to keep making noises that sounded vaguely like conversation until he was alone again. "It sounds good, I mean. It all sounds...good."

Dr. Grey gave him a look that was very familiar by now, a look that said _I want to help and I was hoping this would go better than it did._ The way nice people always looked when they realised he couldn't act like a human being around them. "Take it easy," she said as she closed the door behind her. "Rest up."

* * *

Joel managed to show up for dinner, but otherwise didn't cover himself with glory. He watched himself go through his usual _please God don't let anybody talk to me_ procedures, disappointed that this time he wasn't going to suddenly turn into a calm, laidback charmer. Somehow it surprised him every time: the fear came on, he walled himself up inside it, and waited for everything to be over. Wrong thing to do, but he felt powerless to choose anything different. He sat with his back to the wall and kept his head down, responding with barely coherent mumbles when people said hello.

_Great. Great job. Keep fidgeting with the fork, that part's amazing. They love you already._

It wasn't that he didn't want to know other people better. He overheard a lot of conversations, as a result of his mutation, and it was like watching soap operas: you started to give a shit in spite of yourself, the more details you learned about other people. He liked to think he'd be a good listener, if he could ever get over the first mind-numbing terror of talking to someone. He just hated asking questions, because every single time he felt like he was being rude or nosy. 

So he actually felt a little more at ease when he met Dr. McCoy the next day. Dr. McCoy didn't let conversations grind to a halt; he could fill any silence, anytime, anywhere. He was enormous, with disproportionately large hands and feet, but he moved with a curious light grace. 

"Sorry about the wait! I was looking at these results. The MRI wasn't entirely necessary, I thought, since we had the EEGs, but you know how it is when you've got a new toy. EEGs just aren't as _sexy_ , and you were a good sport in the MRI -- thanks for falling asleep. No claustrophobia, or just exhausted? Both? Right, right, introductions," he interrupted himself, looking up from the chart. "Henry McCoy, resident science nerd. There are other science nerds here, of course, but I am their king. You can call me Hank, though. Your transcript tells me you're a humanities nerd, not a science nerd, so you're outside my jurisdiction."

"I'm not great at science," Joel agreed.

"Do you mind that I peeked? I wasn't going to but then I saw a credit for high school Latin and I was positively delighted, it was like time-travelling. Like being in the '50s! Did you like it? You did pretty well."

"It was just kind of a special little seminar option that Father Gilles did with a few students," Joel said. "It didn't really draw a crowd."

"Well, some things are only enjoyed by the few. It's a code language for geeks, that's what's fun about it. I love that one line from Ennius, early tongue twister: _O Tite tute Tati tibi tanta tyranni tulisti!_ 'O you tyrant, Titus Tatius, such things you made happen.' Nowadays I think conlangs like Elvish and Klingon have sort of replaced -- I have more electrodes here somewhere, where are they?" Hank was bustling around his lab to get a piece of equipment running, which had a dangerously homemade look, all spliced wires and electrical tape. Drifts of papers covered the countertops, and in one corner, a turtle slept in a large aquarium. "What's the other Latin one, it's about butterflies drowning in wine -- no, mice, that's it. Butterflies in wine is a Bill Callahan song, and also an Irish myth, I'm getting confused. _In mari meri miri mori muri necesse est._ 'In a sea of delightful wine, a mouse may only die.' Don't know if that one's genuinely Classical or just the work of some hobbyist, but I never disdain hobbyists and amateurs. I am one myself, one of the perils of being a polymath. Anyway. Life is short and art is long, so as soon as the Professor gets here I'll fire up ol' Clementine here." He patted the casing of the homebrew machine beside him. "How's America treating you so far?"

"Um, good." 

"You're brimming with enthusiasm. I'm always fascinated by the differences between countries that are otherwise quite similar. I was in Oslo earlier this year for a conference and I got to listen to a Swede and a Dane arguing together in a pub, very eye-opening. Such small differences, and they were so fond of them, but still vital. Even within America, we're all one nation under God until someone starts saying chilli should have beans in it. What struck you most about this country, may I ask? Not that you've seen much so far, but I know this isn't your first time."

"Oh. Uh..." Open-ended questions were the worst. Joel knew people asked those because they wanted to involve him, to make him feel at ease, and he felt shitty that it had the opposite effect on him. Hank was trying. But questions like this made Joel's mind go blank better than a Zen koan. "I don't know. Restaurants."

Hank hadn't been expecting that, and glanced up with a raised eyebrow as he opened a sealed package of disposable electrodes with his outsized hands. "Restaurants?"

"Yeah, like...there's more kinds." _So articulate._ "We were out in, um, California, and there were all these small chains. Like, successful places but not nationwide. People had all kinds of opinions about them, like In-N-Out and stuff. It made me think, like...I don't know..."

"No, go on. I have opinions about In-N-Out myself," said Hank, dabbing the cool electrode cream onto the marked spots on Joel's scalp. 

Joel was worried that he was going to fade out before the procedure was over, but he'd been doing well so far. He tried to choose his words carefully as Dr. Xavier wheeled into the lab. "I thought -- I might be totally wrong -- but it seemed like things are just more successful here, I guess. Things _work_ here. In Canada we don't trust new places, new restaurants or anything. Americans seem to get excited about new stuff. They think something good's going to happen. When something new happens at home we just wait for it to fail."

"That," said Hank, "is incredibly cynical, and I never would have guessed it from our neighbours to the north. So thank you, I now have an interesting lump of anecdata to play with. --Morning, Professor. Ready for the real fun to begin? Full of Yankee optimism?"

"I suppose I am." The Professor smiled. "How are you doing this morning, Joel?"

"Not bad," Joel said, although he was wishing he hadn't said anything about the U.S. Sounding like a moron. But he tapped the back of his hand against the arm of the chair: he was solid enough for it to make a sound.

"Excellent. A good night's sleep and a solid meal does wonders. How do your preliminary tests look, Henry?"

"They look the way a brain always looks," Hank said dramatically, like he was auditioning for Doctor Who. " _Magnificent._ To be more prosaic, the first thing that struck me is that The Man Who Wasn't There here isn't epileptic at all."

"I'm not?" Joel sat up in the chair, which was still tilted backward. "But I have seizures."

"The last one you had, according to your medical history, was prior to your manifestation. Two years ago. Correct? You survived quite a bout of meningitis as a child, and some seizures afterwards would be par for the course. But now? Your EEGs and the MRI scan don't show any sign of epilepsy, or at least none of the conventional signs. Neither do the copies of previous results that we have from the Ontario hospitals. Your brain waves are certainly bizarre, and I can see _why_ a neurologist might use that to support an epilepsy diagnosis. But that ceases to be persuasive once you're aware that the patient has a psionic mutation. It could also be that these extreme absences of yours _are_ seizures, as your mutation expresses them. Or perhaps your mutation is functioning in a protective manner, not unlike an aura, pulling your body into an intangible state as soon as it senses abnormal electrical activity in the brain. Perhaps anything! I have no idea. We hope further tests will make that clear." 

Dr. Xavier absorbed all that with a few nods, as though he understood it all. "Indeed. Well, perhaps you could explain to Joel -- and frankly, to me as well -- what precisely you're trying to measure with this test?"

"This is essentially another EEG, but we're also measuring stress via heartrate," Hank explained, waggling a pulse oximeter that was attached to a wrist heart monitor, squeezing it so that it opened and shut like a duck's beak. "Last time I had him stay solid, and he obliged me -- _grazie_ , by the way -- and this time I want to see what happens if he doesn't. I might not be able to get any readings, but if I do, they should be pretty cool. I mean, informative. But also cool."

"I hope Henry's mad scientist act isn't too daunting," said Dr. Xavier fondly. 

"No, I'm okay."

"See, we're going to get along just fine," said Hank, who'd attached the heart monitor and was checking one of the screens on his lab bench. He whistled. "Look at that baseline stress, wow. We have an IM injection of Ativan prepped just in case you get seriously agitated and panicky, Joel, okay? Is that all right with you?" 

"Yeah, good, that's good." Joel was relieved to hear that. Sedatives were good news.

"So Charles, at this point he is readable telepathically, correct? We'll label this a normal state, then. Solid, visible, readable. Now I'd like to see what happens as we mosey down the spectrum -- slowly -- into total invisibility and intangibility. Can we do that, Joel? Go under just a little bit..."

Just a little bit. He could do that. Joel let the lab fade and heard the beeps of the machines become muffled. The electrodes and monitors faded with him, too close to his body and too small to fall away. 

Hank watched the screens and then smacked the edge of the lab bench in obvious delight. "I'm still getting signals, _fantastic._ I was worried about that. Still readable, Professor?"

"No," said Dr. Xavier, his shoulders relaxing slightly. "He's already unreachable telepathically."

"Fascinating," said Hank in a perfect Spock voice. To Joel he said, "Would you be so kind as to deepen the state, if you can? And please keep talking. I'm interested to see how that's affected as the state deepens.

"What should I say?" Joel let himself sink deeper, the figures of Hank and the Professor becoming fuzzy-edged, washed-out. A long way to go until he reached the bottom, but still...

"Just count, I think. I'd love to see how many lines of the Aeneid your teacher taught you to memorise -- do they still do that? -- but numbers would probably be more useful scientifically."

Joel began to count, feeling mechanical. He did know the opening of the Aeneid, up to _Tantaene animis caelestibus irae?_ Father Gilles had said it was like memorising the digits of pi: not really necessary, not proof of any kind of superiority, just a game to play with like-minded people. Joel was always uneasy about his own memory -- before the meningitis, his teachers used to remark that he had an especially good one. Now it was hit or miss, and on bad days he struggled to retain things, anxiously going over lessons again and again. Lingering in his mind, he still had pieces of a very long poem that he'd memorised when he was thirteen, before he first got sick. It had been a challenge to himself, but also an impulse like wanting to run your hands all over a beautiful sculpture in a museum. Wanting to possess, to consume something for its beauty.

Out loud, he kept counting, but inside he tried to remember the pieces of that poem.

 _I was spawned from the glacier_  
_A thousand miles due north_  
_Beyond Cape Chidley..._  


It was long, nine pages in the anthology where he'd found it, and the words crashed and rolled. As he counted out loud with his eyes closed, the woollen nothingness closed around him, as if in sympathy with the words in his memory.

 _Only the white sun, circling the white sky._  
_Only the wind screaming perpetually._  


His voice gave out then. Not like going hoarse after yelling at a hockey game; there was just no feeling in his throat, no sound. Numbed into nothingness, like at the dentist. His vision blurred -- the white walls and black countertops, yes, but not the handles on the cupboards or the sheen of the glassware. Xavier and Hank were only vague impressions of movement.

But he could still think. He said the words to himself, even though no one could hear him.

 _And then the night --_  
_The long night, naked, high over the roof of the world,_  
_Where time seemed frozen in the cold of space..._  


"Anything?"

"He's awake, by these readings. And we know he's here; the cords haven't moved. Even if he'd phased through them the electrodes would have fallen."

"But it isn't like Kitty's phasing, you said?"

"No, you're right, I misspoke. This is -- did you hear that?"

Pause. "No."

"I thought I heard him."

 _And sharp, small lights in rows,_  
_I lay a ghost of menace chill and still,_  
_A shape pearl-pale and monstrous, off to leeward,_  
_Blurring the dim horizon line._  


A drift of white silence -- where had his mind been?

 _Day dragged on day,_  
_And then came fog,_  
_By noon, blind-white..._  


Mutterings; he couldn't make out words. Then:

"Oho, wakey-wakey. He's back into alpha."

It was like the hospital, almost, hearing his parents chatting by the bed, talking about him because they were worried but not realising he could hear. _I just wish he would go out and do things with other boys, you know?_ Too heavy, too dense to be able to speak.

No, he had to wake up. Had to get out of this. One of these days he was going to go under and he wouldn't get back. What time was it? How long had he been out? How many more hours gone? He'd lost count of the numbers he'd been blankly reciting, so he arbitrarily chose 300 and kept going from there.

"Did you hear _that?_ "

"I did. 306, sounds like he lost count and went backwards -- aha, that was a flicker."

And then, miraculously, the light of the room flooded over him and Hank was removing the electrodes, his hands gentle despite their size. "Welcome back, Mr. McCree. No need to shake like that. I'm not going to hurt you."

"It's not you." Joel's first impulse was always to say _it's okay_ or _I'm fine_ because that was the best way to make people give him some space, but sometimes he just wasn't fine and he couldn't lie. "It's so horrible, you don't know, I can never describe it..."

"Joel, I'm sorry." The Professor was reaching out toward his mind, like an optometrist's flashlight in the darkness. "But now that we know more, we can help you."

"No, you can't." He reached for more, for a way to say what he wanted to, but the words didn't come, so he just repeated himself. "You can't, you can't at all."

The hands curling back, concerned adult looks, _everything is going to be all right, Joel,_ and no it wouldn't. It was never going to be all right. The world was swimming, not the way it did when he was fading out -- just swimming, swelling with heat and getting ready to burst all over him, like a tray of his aunt's homemade jam that had broken and scalded him once. Jars shattered on the floor, surrounded by the glossy, sunlit crimson beauty of the boiled strawberries -- it was an overwhelming loveliness one moment before the pain kicked in, a second of utter resignation.

He twisted in the chair, bringing his knees up, trying to physically hold himself together. It felt wrong to come back from all that Arctic whiteness and still be _himself_ , himself and not someone else, but no one understood that. It was obscene, to begin with, that everyone was sentenced to only be one person for their entire lives -- didn't everyone deserve a break from that kind of tedium and misery? But it was much worse that he had been allowed to take the life of that one happy 13-year-old kid and run it right into the ground the way he was doing. 

It was all some horrible mistake, he should have been dead years ago. Dead and not floating back to the surface like this --

 _"Enough,"_ the Professor said, his mind and voice both loud.

Hank jumped. Probably the whole mansion heard it, but it hadn't been a telepathic compulsion, and therefore it was as effective as yelling at a freight train. Joel was past the point where he could calm down just because someone told him to, no matter how forcefully they said it. He was buckling under the pain, always giving up so easily. Wordless pain cut into his head like a toothache. Everyone had to stop lying and saying things would improve -- it was all wasted effort, and they would have to cut him off, throw his body into the woods to rot. Let him sleep in the mud under the ice and never come up again. He saw the Professor's face twist, and knew that he was hurting people again, but nothing could stop it.

"Henry, please, you ought to give him the Ativan--"

And then, thank God, thank God, the needle.

* * *

"I don't believe in sedating patients," Charles said, "Ordinarily. Not for...not for that."

The boy was laid out on the infirmary bed, still in drugged sleep. He was an unencouraging chalky colour, gaunt and wan. Hank had him on an IV, since dehydration was increasingly a concern as well as malnutrition, and it was true that the mere presence of a tube in the arm made a person look sicker than he was.

But the unpleasant truth was that Joel should have been awake, talking, maybe eating something. _He's missing his own life_ , just as Visineau had said. It had been foolish to let him...no, to ask him to descend into that mindless state of invisibility. Joel would be even more reluctant to use his power deliberately in the future.

Hank rubbed the back of his neck, and Charles knew that it had been a long day for them both. "There was no good reason for him to suffer like that, and you know it. We asked if he was willing to have the Ativan administered in this scenario, and he said yes. If he had been in pain from kidney stones, you wouldn't have thought twice about whether he should be medicated."

"This is different. I ordered it because he was hurting _me_ , not because he was in pain. He's a loud broadcaster. Perhaps even some latent telepathic ability. But I should have been prepared for that. Of course he would panic upon reappearing. I didn't see it coming."

"Charles--" Hank shook his head. "This isn't a profitable debate. If you hadn't ordered it, I would have given the Ativan myself. It was the right call, no matter what your reasons were."

"I'm just worried that this will damage our chances to have a therapeutic rapport..."

"Get some rest, Charles, please."

Hank opened the door, and after a few moments, Charles followed him out.

"Look on the bright side," Hank said as they headed down the hall. "We're already running circles around Dr. Visineau _et alii_. It isn't a telepathic illusion of disappearance. It isn't quantum tunnelling, like Kitty's power. The most intriguing theory, if I do say so myself since I came up with it, is that he's actually disappearing to another dimension, if you will. My reasoning--"

"In the morning, please, Henry." Charles had a headache.

How had the situation got so out of control? He had treated other students who were as sick as Joel, and he'd assumed that his emotional problems were actually straightforward. Anxiety and depression were to be expected in the wake of bacterial meningitis. Jean herself had probably been worse, although to some extent vegetative symptoms were easier to deal with than agitated panic; there was less chance of the patient acting out suddenly. But he was able to _feel_ Jean, to observe how her mind had twisted on itself and collapsed. There was something there to unravel, and he could get a grip on her. 

The brief telepathic glimpses he was getting now of Joel were not enough. The files from Visineau weren't enough, due to the man's inability to understand the pressures on a young mutant. If Joel would be able to last ten minutes in therapy without disappearing it would be a miracle, and even then, that would not be enough.

His room was dark. Charles suddenly became aware not only of the headache, but of tight shoulders and a stomach full of dread. He thought of the things his mother used to say: _it will all come out in the wash._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem in this chapter is "The Iceberg" by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts.


	3. The Sin of Pride

_That Greta, she said, she's just making big. A man full up on beer_  
_saying in that beer how big he is. Not knowing that Coyote'll get him_  
_just walking round the side of the house to make water._  
  
_I don't set no store by Coyote, Theophil said. There's no big Coyote,_  
_like you think. There's not just one of him. He's everywhere._  
_The government's got his number too. They've set a bounty on him_  
_at fifty cents a brush. I could live well at his expense._  
—Sheila Watson, _The Double Hook_

The next day, Charles saw Joel in his office for their first real therapy session. The boy had the blank, preoccupied look of someone still working off the effects of sedatives, but he was almost solid -- Charles could hear, faintly, the slow murmur of his thoughts. He didn't press, and promised himself he wouldn't probe too deeply, nor be caught by surprise if there was another overflow of that scalding pain.

"I'm sorry that the tests yesterday caused you so much distress," Charles said to Joel. "But it was good to see you chatting with Henry."

Joel made a sound that wasn't exactly a laugh, just a single outbreath, barely audible. "He was doing all the work."

"Well, he likes it that way, so you weren't doing anything wrong there. And in fact you did say a little more than usual," Charles said with a smile. "I was interested to hear your observations about American enterprise. I came in on the tail end of that."

"I was making an idiot of myself is all."

"Is it possible to do that when none of the people in the room with you think that you look foolish?"

Silence.

Charles tried again. "Dr. Visineau's notes say that you're very intelligent. I haven't seen anything to contradict that."

"My grades are garbage, so."

"Grades aren't everything," said Charles. "Most people who have problems with depression find it very difficult to turn in assignments, and it hurts their grades. It doesn't mean that they haven't learned, or that they aren't intelligent. It's only that it's difficult for them to demonstrate it. So yes, your grades show that you don't turn things in on time or at all -- that's true. But when I actually speak with your teachers, who see you every day, they tell me that the grades don't tell the whole story."

"I'm just lazy," Joel said. He was bent forward in his seat, a tissue in his hands, shredding it to pieces. "Anyway, school stuff is...if I wasn't a lazy fuck then I'd do better, sure. But that's not like actually being smart."

"So you don't think that success in school is a good measure of intelligence, you're saying?"

The boy shook his head silently.

"Interesting. What would be a sign of intelligence, for you?"

Joel started to answer, but then it seemed to be too much for him and he only shook his head again, and shrugged.

"Ah, well." Charles smiled, to reassure him. "Have a think about it, and perhaps I'll ask you again some other time. The first thing I would like us to explore today is how your powers first manifested."

"Didn't Father Gilles put that in my file?"

"Yes, he did. But humour me -- I'd like to hear the story from you."

"But you already know?"

"I do."

"Okay." That seemed to ease him, by a minuscule amount. Joel licked his lips, staring at his hands. The backs of his palms had red welts across them, from his habit of digging his fingernails into the skin, but he wasn't doing that now.

He spoke slowly, sometimes pausing as if his throat was too constricted to keep talking. "When I was thirteen, I got meningitis. Small private school, infected water fountain. First kid died, I was okay. Just got migraines and seizures after. Like you do." Short and telegraphic, trying not to take up too much space with his words, not to demand too much interest, too many reactions. "But then I started having blackouts when I was fifteen. Fainting, actually, not blackouts -- that's just what my mother called them. She said it used to happen to her, just part of being a teenager. Growing too fast, or something. I don't know if that's a real science explanation or if it's just a mom explanation. I didn't go to the doctor about it. It was kinda the least of my problems, because I was on all these meds and they didn't stop the seizures."

Charles nodded, but he didn't interrupt.

"They had to pull me out of school, because I started having them every day. Not always _grand mal,_ but I would just lose the time for awhile."

A long pause, this time. Charles prodded him lightly. "And?"

"And I went in the hospital," he said. "The neurology ward at the Civic."

Charles caught the glimmer of a memory, as Joel became a little more solid in the chair. Four old men in the ward, and Joel, and a sitter reading under a light in one corner. _That would be a good job for someone like you, when you get to university,_ his aunt had commented. _You get to just sit and read for most of your shift._ A stubborn smell of feces that never went away, from one of the patients who couldn't control his bowels. And underneath that, the hospital smell of...skin.

Xavier remembered that smell, very well indeed. "Go on."

"I woke up -- I think I woke up. And I wasn't...anything. I couldn't see myself, feel anything. Hearing, I can usually hear pretty well when I'm in it -- the nurse's station was close, you know how noisy those are, but nothing was clear. Then the ward sitter looks up from her book, she checks the bathroom, then runs to press the call button. When the nurse came, the sitter said I was gone. That I slipped out somehow. 'Well, what, were you asleep?' says the nurse, and the sitter starts crying, must've thought she was gonna lose her job. I wanted to say I was there, I tried to, but nothing happened. And then everything got fuzzier, until I couldn't see or hear anything at all."

Charles made a quiet, attentive sound. "And then?"

"I came out of it, a while later. It was still dark, and I went to the window -- I couldn't feel my body, but I could move. It was weird. My hand went through the glass. I decided I must be dead."

"And what did you do?" Charles knew the story from the file, but he wanted to hear Joel tell it.

"I went down...through the hospital. I was afraid of the elevator, because I couldn't push the buttons and saw the empty shaft through the doors. So I found the fire stairs. It took a long time. Neurology was on the seventh floor." Joel was talking now with his gaze directed past Charles' shoulder and out the window, but at least he was talking. "It was snowing outside, but I couldn't feel it. I didn't know what to do. But I thought I was dead, so I went to the church near the hospital. I don't know what I thought that would accomplish. There wasn't anybody there. For a long time I just waited there, to see if anything would happen. Then the whiteness came."

"The deepest phase of your power."

"I guess." Joel didn't seem to like that phrasing. "It was...just nothing. As much as I could think anything, I was like, 'Oh, okay, I guess that's the answer, then.' That's what happens when you die. White empty nothing. But I came out of it, and by that time daily Mass had started. There were a few old people there, and the priest, I think. You don't get a crowd at that hour. I was in the back, so no one was looking but the priest. He acted casual, until the Mass was over. Then he came up to me and...and asked what I was."

Charles let that hang in the air for a moment before prodding. "What did you tell him?"

"I told him I was dead. I said I'd been in the hospital, having brain problems, and now I was dead."

"I suppose that's not an unreasonable conclusion to draw. What did he say?"

"He asked for my name and called the hospital to find out."

"Practical man," said Charles, a little relieved that this story didn't involve panicking religious leaders and impromptu exorcisms. He'd heard stories like that before from other mutants. "What did the hospital do?"

Joel started, as if he had been thinking of something else. "Oh. Nothing, they just said I had escaped and put me back in the ward. Then they said I was psychotic, transferred me to the Royal Ottawa and put me on APs. But I kept disappearing. Finally it happened while someone was actually watching me, so they checked my DNA."

"And found the X-gene. What did your parents think of all this?"

Joel shrugged. "Well, you talked to my dad. Mutation is his thing, he was working on it before they ever knew it affected me."

"I did talk to your father, yes. I suppose what I'm asking is what their reaction was actually like. When the rubber hits the road, if you will."

"No, they mean all that stuff they say. They were glad just to know what was wrong, and Dad had already been working on a commission about mutants. He was sad, at first, because he knew it was hard on me. But he found out about St. Rita's and pushed to get me in there."

"And that was all?"

"That," Joel said with unusual firmness, "was all."

 

That, it seemed, _was_ all -- Charles could not find any evidence that the McCrees had been anything but compassionate and accepting. Nothing was mentioned in the file, and there was nothing in Joel's responses and the tiny radar blips Charles picked up from his mind. And the McCrees, he thought, were trustworthy.

So why this little shoot of doubt?

* * *

A few weeks after Joel's arrival, Charles received a long-distance call from Ottawa. Dr. Visineau did not waste much time with pleasantries. "So, how is he doing?"

"Quite well," Charles said evasively. "I believe we've already made some progress, at least."

Dr. Visineau laughed on the other end. "Have you? Well, I would be interested to hear what you've managed to do for him in three weeks."

"If you think it's so early, why did you call?"

"I wanted to know how _Joel_ was doing, not what progress you might have made. Although I'm pleased to hear about that, very much." He pronounced the name as two syllables in his French accent, in which words seemed to be suspended, weightless, without English's emphatic rhythm. It was very unlike a European French accent, Charles thought, although he couldn't quite put his finger on the differences in sound. 

"Is he settling in all right?" Dr. Visineau asked.

It was embarrassing that Charles couldn't quite clear such a low bar. No, Joel was not settling in particularly well. He never left his room unless forced, and ate alone, shrouding himself in self-imposed solitude. "Well, he's eating better."

_"Ah, ouais?_ That, that was always a problem. He's told us that he doesn't get hungry when he's gone _là-bas_ , but evidently his body is hungry even if he doesn't perceive it. He's been losing weight that he really can't spare. We just...it was very difficult to get anything into him. He would emerge, we would rush to get him fed, and he would disappear."

"I think he interprets that sort of action as...well, being an imposition on others, maybe," Charles said.

"Exactly, yes. Most people who don't like being fussed over, it's pride, they want to feel independent. For Joel, it's more that he doesn't believe he's worth the trouble. But some thinkers take the view that low self-esteem is merely another form of pride, a belief that one must be perfect..." Visineau trailed off.

"Well, sin is not my business, Doctor," Charles said, wanting to cut the conversation off before it could veer into religious territory. 

Visineau paused for a few moments, then said, "You know, Charles, he _is_ a religious person. That's not something I imposed on him. His family is very Catholic, he receives the sacraments. It doesn't have to be your business, but it's there. It's real."

Charles sighed. "I haven't accused you of imposing religion on him. Nor do I intend to discourage him from finding comfort in it, if he does."

"Comfort is not the word I'd use. One finds _meaning_ in religion, and that is a part of therapy."

"I'm not sure I agree that all religious people have the same motivations. But it's not relevant," said Charles. "Right now, my concern is to start repairing my patient's sense of self. Once he learns to control his gifts better, his view of himself will probably improve. As it is, his lack of control is interfering with therapy and, it seems, with ordinary physical health."

"Oh, I agree with you," Visineau said mildly.

"For once."

"Yes, for once. So he's eating better, that's wonderful. What else?"

Charles told him about Hank's theory that Joel was not epileptic, and ran through a quick version of Hank's notes on the boy's powers. "Dr. McCoy has termed it the _aphanes_ , or an _aphanic state_. He hasn't decided which he likes better yet."

"Ah, Dr. McCoy knows his Greek. The negative _a-_ prefix and _phanes_ , 'appearing' -- do I have that right?"

"Quite. It means what is unseen, invisible, sometimes with a connotation of being hidden or secret, sometimes suggesting uncertainty. A murky sort of word."

"That's really very appropriate. We never did get a chance to offer Greek at St. Rita's -- we tried small groups to work on Latin but there just wasn't enough interest." A pause. "It really is small, St. Rita's. When a patient leaves, I get to miss having him around. Or not around, as the case may be. Perhaps I should have kept him here and given it another go."

"If you don't mind my asking..." Charles said, and then stopped. Was it politic to discuss this with Visineau?

"Yes?"

"Why did you refer Joel to me in particular?"

Visineau laughed in surprise. "I'm sorry? Why do you think? You're the best. The foremost expert on treating mutants in North America."

"I'll happily agree that I'm the best, if you say so," Charles said dryly. "But I don't do much clinical work these days. I've mostly been working with mutant children who are healthy, more or less, and need help getting an education."

"True, and I wasn't sure if you'd agree to take the referral. But the only other choice was Donald Morrison in Vancouver, and frankly he's a distant third to you and me, eh? Too far away, besides. I'm surprised you had to ask, though. Did you honestly think I didn't respect you as a clinician?"

"No, I'm just..." Charles exhaled and turned his chair around to look out the window. "I was wondering if there was any other reason."

A long silence on the other end of the line. Charles wished he could probe the priest's mind from here, or at least pick up the flavour of his feelings. Finally Visineau said, "If you are referring to the rumours and the communiqué from the CFH, yes, I've read it. It was in the _Citizen_ this morning."

The Canadian Front for Humanity were a small anti-mutant group from rural Eastern Ontario. Charles was only marginally aware of them, and Jean's _Life of Brian_ joke in Ottawa was about all he thought they were worth. "I don't follow you."

"They sent some rabid scribblings to the paper, who decided their nonsense deserved a platform. You know the kind of thing. _Unelected senator sends mutant son to New York to be trained as secret operative against our country! 'Dr.' Charles Xavier a known mutant sympathiser, probably a mutant himself! Stop these politicians from enslaving us all!_ It got a bit violent at the end, but the RCMP are on it."

"I should certainly hope so." How had that news got out so fast? Maybe the Senator had some false friends, but surely Charles and Jean had been discreet, and quick besides. Of course anyone who defended mutants was thought to be secretly one of them, and Senator McCree had never hidden the fact that his son was a mutant...in staid, peaceful Ottawa, mutation was treated like Down's Syndrome -- unfortunate, certainly nothing to be ashamed of, but not to be discussed in public. "I had no idea this CFH had sources so close to the Senator. I didn't even know they were still active. Canadian Front for Humanity, isn't it? Or Friends of Humanity?"

"No, Front for Humanity, I think. I'll send you a link to the article, but -- well, it's all over the news up here, you can google. _Ben, que_...that's what I thought you were asking, but I see it's news to you. In any case. Did I think you might be a mutant? Yes. It's rumoured. It's confirmed that your teachers there are mutants, so why not you too? You don't have to tell me one way or the other, because it doesn't matter to me. Is that why I sent Joel to you? Not really. I referred him because I was tired of dealing with him. And because I was tired, we weren't making progress. Nothing more exciting than that."

Charles had certainly heard that before. Sometimes a psychologist would say there was a failure to create a therapeutic alliance; sometimes the patient was resisting therapy, as Joel had been accused; but between themselves, colleagues would say, "I just ran out of ideas." Or, "We didn't get along." Or, "I was tired of dealing with him."

It was common. But mutants didn't have enough friendly mental health professionals to shop around, and Xavier was often a last resort, the point where referrals stopped. And Joel's statement at St. Rita's ( _they're done trying, it's run its course_ ) said that he knew exactly why he was being referred. That would sting for anyone, and it would be worse for someone so fragile.

"Joel," Visineau said, "Is a good boy. I like him a lot; I like his family. But he is hard to help."

"I can't even get to square one with him," Charles said wearily, too frustrated to be circumspect. "The only time I got him to talk was when he was heavily medicated. The rest of the time I have to just assume that he's there and listening to me...and if he can't speak, I don't know why we should bother with the pretence of a session. Some days we only get minutes to talk before he's gone. Meanwhile, his physical health is a mess and he spends half his time in that -- that comatose invisible state of his. In the Aphanes, as Hank would say. Zero interaction with any of the other students. We haven't even had much chance to talk about controlling his powers, since he always seems so close to some sort of crisis. I don't know where to begin."

"But you are medicating him?"

"No. That is, I had him sedated the other night," Charles admitted. "And the night after that, because he asked for it. Dr. McCoy and I were hesitant, but--"

"Do it," Visineau interrupted. "I know it's not usual practice, and that's why I avoided it. Doctors are concerned about addiction and tolerance, rightly so. But I regret that -- he wouldn't have lost so much weight. As I said in the file, SSRIs don't have any effect, MAOIs haven't worked either, but he's very sensitive to benzodiazepines and Z-drugs."

"I don't believe in treating patients that way. Especially not mutants. The effects of psychiatric drugs on mutants haven't been well-explored."

A long sigh. "Well, think about it. You know all the arguments as well as I do. And you also know the effects of untreated depression."

Yes, he did.

The sky was cloudy outside, and it looked like rain. Charles gazed out at the woods that surrounded the mansion's grounds, at the creek that wound through. Not deep enough for drowning, unless Joel did something creative.

"Tell me," he asked the priest. "Does he play chess at all?"

* * *

Charles did try chess. He thought it would be a good experience, something to bond them outside of therapy and classes. Being back in school didn't seem to agree with Joel. He never spoke and spent most of the day just over the edge of the Aphanes, often disappearing during class. By all reports (Ororo kept close tabs on the social relationships in her history classes), Joel never got much past basic introductions with the other students.

Charles hoped the chess would be more helpful, giving the boy some confidence; Xavier intended to let him win a few times, when he deserved it. Some experiences of success and victory often worked to "prime the pump" with patients who lacked confidence.

It didn't work out like that. Joel knew how to play, but wasn't especially suited to the game. He was too wary to use his strong pieces well, and always played as if he were conducting a siege: pawns in an unbroken wall across the board. Breaking through the screen with a knight was laughably easy. The games also suffered from inertia (boredom was too unkind a word), for if the rules of the game had been up to Joel, nobody would ever have to make a move at all, and he took a long time deciding. There was one exception: he could be thrown off-balance easily by the loss of a favoured piece, and would react emotionally, trying to get revenge for the loss of his queen rather than thinking about his moves.

Charles tried to teach him, and didn't play with anything like the aggression he would have used against Erik. But eventually Charles decided that demolishing a poorly-constructed defensive screen twice a week just wasn't creating the sort of bond he desired.

When Joel came into the office and saw that the chessboard was empty, wheeled away in its customary corner, the boy breathed an audible sigh of relief.

"You didn't seem to enjoy it much," Charles said by way of explanation. "Perhaps there's something else we might do together. Any suggestions?"

Joel, of course, just shrugged and began to dig his nails into his hands.

"What do you like to do?"

Still too general. Joel retreated into his faint, flickering state and said, "I don't do anything. I'm just...I'm really boring."

"Now, you must do something. Your parents sent you some boxes from home, so you must have wanted something from home."

There had been six boxes, all small. "Just books."

"So you value your books, or else you would be content to leave them at home." Charles got a vague shrug in response. "What were some of the books that your parents sent you?"

That cut a little close; Joel's form became still more dim. "Just books."

"Name me one. Humour me."

"They're stupid," Joel whispered. "They're just books."

It was like pulling teeth. The boy was reacting with so much shame that Charles half wondered if those six boxes were in fact chock-a-block with pornography. Finally, however, Joel caved in and confessed that one of the books sent was _The Brothers Karamazov_ , a gift from his father. He sank into complete imperceptibility.

"Well. Perhaps we could read together," Charles suggested to the empty air, wondering if the boy was conscious or if he had fallen all the way into the Aphanes. Of all the things to be ashamed of, honestly. "Like a book club. I'm quite fond of Dostoevsky."

Joel made no response for several minutes, but at last solidified enough to accept the arrangement. "I guess."

"Is _Karamazov_ your favourite, or one of the others...?"

He dug his nails into his skin. " _Underground_ ," was all he said.

* * *

It was textbook avoidant behaviour; Charles knew that. Joel resisted giving up information and believed any special attention was bound to be negative -- the more Charles pushed to find something out, even if the questions were harmless, the more alarmed Joel became.

That didn't make it any less wearisome. As the weeks went on, Joel seemed to deteriorate. He disappeared more and more, and Charles was beginning to suspect it really was deliberate. _Don't call it deliberate,_ Charles scolded himself. _It's a protective behaviour, it's not malicious._

The few things Joel said in therapy were cryptic, with occasional flashes of nasty imagery. Charles struggled to understand, but he had no context for the images, no mental pictures or memories with which to compare them. He kept notes by his bedside, in case he should wake up from a dream with some inspiration.

A bird hitting a window, meat rotting in an art gallery, a tumour.


	4. A Strong Perfume

_I wished to live, but I saw clearly that I was not living,_  
_but rather wrestling with the shadow of death;_  
_there was no one to give me life, and I was not able to take it._  
—St. Teresa of Avila

Joel was coming apart and he knew it, but it didn't feel like disintegration. It felt like closing up, as if he were being cocooned. One night he dreamed that there was a deep wound in his chest, as if from heart surgery, and as it healed, the scar tissue took over his whole body, encasing him from head to foot in strands of hard white material.

It was hard to move. His face felt dead, like meat, and there was a peculiar warmth in being so numb. Nothing mattered, and that quelled the panic. He spent days under in the Aphanes, mind awash with white, but even when he was visible, people didn't seem to see him. Or, no, they saw, but their eyes passed right over him. It was like being inanimate, rather than invisible. A tropical plant in a dentist's office -- about that level of relevance.

Weeks more had gone by, and it was now early December. Colder than he'd expected, down here in New York. Just like he'd told the Professor, Joel didn't do anything with his spare time. Sometimes he went outside and walked until he got tired, and that was all. If he walked far enough, off the grounds of the mansion entirely and down the highway for awhile, he eventually got to a few streets of exurban homes, not so different from home.

Snow was blowing on the wind, tiny flakes that were only visible as a faint sparkle under the streetlights, the air hovering around freezing. It was almost a gentle cold, domestic and reassuring. Like being inside your own refrigerator, Joel thought as he turned to walk back to the mansion again. It was dark now and the lights were on in the living rooms, curtains open to display those other lives, other narratives. Everyone seemed to be watching TV, an aquarium glow flickering on white walls. Clocks, lamps, Monet prints on boards, no visible human figures, although sometimes there were shadows on the walls. Joel watched them without thinking about anything in particular, pretending that the wind was soughing straight through his head, that he was a mailbox, a Japanese maple, an election sign on the lawn. 

He liked his walks, as much as he liked anything right now. They were peaceful.

In sessions with Dr. Xavier, Joel was silent as a dead insect on a windowsill.

"How are you feeling today?"

The pattern of the carpet was sickening, a twisting mass of purples and browns, leaves and flowers. If you stared long enough they moved, brown like seaweed underwater, the plants in the river where they had the cottage. Joel could almost see the shadow of the canoe gliding over them, a black ovate shape drifting across his vision...

"Joel."

He blinked. An answer was required. "I'm okay."

It was important to be polite.

"Are you really?" The Professor tried to catch his eye -- in his peripheral vision, Joel saw him moving his head.

"No."

"Ah. Progress. So what's wrong?"

It hurt the way a fever does, nothing exact, just an unbearable _no_ from the brain, a pervasive discomfort. "I dunno. I'm not..."

Dr. Xavier's sharp eyes were watching his face, as if trying to pick out a bird from foliage. "Yes?"

"I don't know."

Long, long release of air. "Do you want to talk, or shall I just let you go for today?"

 _Shit. Get it together, asshole._ "I'm sorry. Uh, I'll talk."

The Professor looked down at his notes and said, "You were saying, a few days ago, something about meat in an art gallery...could you say a bit more about that?"

Joel shrugged, because he wasn't sure that he could say any more about it. It had probably been a mistake to even mention it. At the time, he had thought, or hoped, that Dr. Xavier would understand, that the image would speak to him in a way that Joel himself no longer could. The dress made of rotting meat had been an installation at the National Gallery back in the '80s, which had provoked a nation-wide controversy: people said it was wasteful, self-indulgent, disgusting, an insult to the poor. But of course it probably wasn't common knowledge in New York -- not important enough. Americans had better things to care about. Joel just felt like an idiot for bringing it up. The Professor never asked, and maybe he thought the idea of meat rotting in a gallery was Joel's own invention. Who knew what he thought? The Professor was healthy, so no one could ask him questions like that.

"Do you feel, perhaps, that you are on display somehow?" Xavier prodded.

"A bit." That was part of it, but the crime was the waste of taxpayers' money. There were starving people on the streets of every major city, and he'd been using up resources, taking up hospital beds, wasting the time and attention of experts. He was rotting, all the chemicals in his body were changing, there was vermin laying eggs in his brain, _that_ was how he felt.

The Professor sighed. "Joel, if you aren't going to talk, perhaps you could try to stay solid so that I can get an idea of what you're thinking?"

Something shook inside him, then, a muscle deep in his chest spasming involuntarily. It made him want to sob and cough at once, and suddenly he didn't care about being good and not imposing on people. "Do you think I'm, do you hate me for this? I wish I knew, I wish I could say..."

He put his hands to his face, as if he could put the words back in, but it was too late. "I'm sorry."

"I don't hate you, Joel," said Dr. Xavier quietly. "I want to help you."

"You can't, though." If there was anything he knew, he knew that. "You can't."

"Why not? Why don't you believe that you can get better?"

"Because it's been too long. I'm scarred over, I don't work anymore." He had the unnerving feeling of the dream again, his fingers bound together by the white strands.

But the Professor wasn't listening. He just said something about having hope, about healing always being possible, and Joel knew that he had failed to make it clear just how bad the situation had become.

Most of the sessions were like this, long stupid silences and bursts of self-pity. Occasionally they talked about books, and that was much easier. Dr. Xavier wanted to put _Notes from Underground_ aside for another time, and instead had suggested some Sophocles, _Antigone_. Joel had studied it before, at St. Rita's.

"Creon's my favourite," Joel ventured once during a discussion, and of course the Professor seized on it.

"Creon, really? Why is that?"

"Because he didn't have any good options," Joel said, but that wasn't exactly it. His father had loved Creon, and had mounted a passionate defence of the character over dinner when the conversation turned to what Joel was reading for school. "Trudeau said he felt like Creon during the October Crisis."

"I'm not sure I'm familiar with the October Crisis, actually," said Dr. Xavier. "What was it?"

"Oh. Um..." Joel bit his lip, embarrassed. But it was a direct question, so he tried to squeeze out an answer. "In 1970, there were terrorists. French separatists setting off bombs and stuff..."

The Professor nodded. "Ah, yes, I remember now. The name 'October Crisis' was unfamiliar to me, that's all. They kidnapped a politician, didn't they?"

"A politician and a diplomat, Pierre Laporte and James Cross," said Joel, warming to his topic a little. He liked history. "Laporte they killed. Trudeau declared martial law over the country and rounded up a lot of francophones for questioning. A reporter asked him how far he would go, and Trudeau shrugged and said, 'Just watch me.' It was famous. James Cross was rescued, but he never forgave us."

"Never forgave...?"

"Us, the country, he never forgave us. We were doing our best. More than that, people said Trudeau should never have done what he did. But Cross wasn't satisfied with that." Joel looked back down at the book and remembered he was supposed to be relating this to the play. "People said it was unjust and autocratic. But Creon thought it was necessary. Trudeau thought so too, but with more reason. Parliament asked him to declare martial law, that wasn't just a whim of his own."

"That's the most you've spoken in weeks," Dr. Xavier observed.

Joel shut up and said nothing. What did he think he was, a Heritage Moment? Stupid blabbermouth.

The Professor wheeled close to him, and took the book from Joel's hands, gently. He looked at the pages.

"You have this underlined -- _to value life then one must value law._ Is that something that spoke to you?"

Dad underlined that. It was his pen. Joel could feel the fogginess of the deeper Aphanes beginning to close over him, but he dug his fingers into the cushy arm of the chair and said, "I guess."

"What does it mean to you?"

Joel stared down at the book in the Professor's hands, trying to work out what it could mean, what his father might have meant. Joel heard that sort of thing often at home, and understood the tone, the general principles at work, but rarely thought about the exact meaning. Finally he worked backwards from another of his father's aphorisms, and said, "The law protects life, I guess."

"Does it?" Xavier smiled, a little sadly. "It certainly should, you're right about that."

Silence. Joel ran his fingertips along the brocade chair, trying to bring himself back to full solidity. Touching, and being touched, was useful in this first stage when he was only ghostly around the edges.

Dr. Xavier said, "So this is an important idea to you -- that people need to be protected. That people need justice in order to live well. Why do you think this matters so much for you?"

"It matters to everyone."

"No, it doesn't," said the Professor evenly. "I know people who think just the opposite, that we all have to protect ourselves. What led you to your own opinion?"

Joel shrugged. "I'm an Ottawa kid. The nanny state is my natural habitat."

Xavier tilted his head. "So do you feel protected already, in that habitat?"

Another silence.

"No," Joel whispered.

"Why not?"

"Because -- because I'm not -- I don't know. I'm never safe. I know my parents tried. Their whole life, since they found out something was wrong with me, has been this: trying to protect me. But still, I feel like...as if I'm not really in the category of people that get helped. I'm not a person anymore at all." He felt his next words form in his mind, debated for a moment whether to say them aloud, and then decided he might as well: "I feel like I'm already dead."

It didn't really get a reaction; Dr. Xavier didn't seem like he was surprised to hear that. Probably he wasn't. "How so?"

But Joel could not get more specific than that. He only shook his head.

* * *

There were always questions about suicide, every session. Joel usually lied, because it was unthinkable to tell the truth to Xavier, who had given him so much. He was half-aware of the argument that it was the Professor's job to deal with this, but something else in him was tightly laced and stiff-lipped, and unwilling to be so crass as to discuss suicide.

But he thought about it. And he thought about the time he had attempted it. The first time, when he was fifteen, it had been an impulse thing. At a party, a dinner party given by one of his father's friends. Why had he even been invited? He couldn't remember -- probably curiosity and pity on the part of the friend. No, more likely Dad had thought it would be good for him to get out.

The friend was someone Dad had known from the Human Rights Commission, a guy named Marin Leavitt, who was the type who would fall all over himself to make people feel accepted and welcome. It backfired, at least with Joel. Joel remembered that Mr. Leavitt, balding with a neat grey beard and glasses, had asked questions all night: how did they feel about the recent Supremes decision, what schools were they looking into, did they have an opinion on the Mutant Health Care & Education Act, what were their options?

And the question he wasn't asking, the question that was still in Leavitt's face every time he looked in Joel's direction, was, _"How does it feel?"_ How did it feel to be _sui generis_ , the minority of minorities, the only person who could do this one trick in this one way? How did it really feel to be a mutant? All night long, Leavitt's face had been filled with that question, the question that wasn't asked.

Or not. Dr. Xavier had been telling him not to assume like that. "You aren't a mind reader, Joel. I am, but you're not."

Joel remembered that he had tried very hard not to fade away and embarrass his father, but it started to happen anyway. His mother: "Marin, maybe a little of that rosé? It might settle his nerves a bit."

He drank the sickly pink wine down quickly, like medicine, and it actually worked. It dulled his fear enough to keep him solid. Midway through dinner, dizzy and giddy, he ducked out politely and locked himself in the bathroom with the contents of the medicine cabinet.

 _Why then?_ Father Gilles had asked, again and again. How had he been feeling?

Joel could not remember any feeling other than excitement, delighted anticipation. He wasn't thinking about death, or thinking about anything -- it was just that glee that you get when something that has been broken suddenly starts to work, or something that was forbidden is suddenly allowed.

He might have succeeded, if he'd been more circumspect about the setting. That was stupid and inconsiderate -- they very narrowly averted a major shitstorm. Leavitt and his mother jimmied the door open with a bamboo skewer, and they found him curled up in the bathtub, unconscious and covered in vomit.

"Had it been anyone else," said his father later, "Anyone but Marin, who I've known for years, and who understands the pressures mutants are under these days -- it would have been over. The Tories would have jumped all over it, and never mind the press. It used to be that families were off-limits, but that's changing. We're becoming Americanised. I have some allies who would be swayed by that sort of thing. Dragging Marin into it is completely unforgivable."

And his father was right. The Conservatives in the Senate had already made hay with the fact that Jim McCree's son was a mutant. It destroyed the aura of "objective justice" that Joel's father once had; that phrase of his, "objective justice", had made headlines, back when he was Justice Minister. But he wasn't objective anymore, and families were no longer off-limits.

A suicide attempt was serious business, but it was only nuclear if it happened in Ottawa, at the very home of a politician or the friend of one. Then it was a political act. It would never be in the media, but everyone who mattered would know. But now Joel had been sent away, and he was already dealt with and gone; what he did now couldn't hurt his father.

It was just a matter of nerve. Joel knew what he was -- not merely a mutant, but a waste of time, energy, money, and oxygen. He had become the living dead, like his grandfather had been in his last days: someone everyone had to care for and tiptoe around, who did not and could not contribute anything in return. He was the _Lares_ of a Roman house; he was a family tomb to be whitewashed every year.

And he had to put other people's interests first and excise himself from the world. That was his duty, and it was perfectly clear. His father was a skilled politician, and could make gold out of this if he really put his mind to it. But it would really be unforgivable to leave a corpse in the Professor's house. He could maybe do it outside.


	5. Voices from the Wilderness

_I heard a voice_  
_calling from the wilderness,_  
_calling from the wilderness._  
_Not quite a whistle, not quite a song._  
_Not too short, not too long._  
_I know you but you don't know me._  
—Martin Tielli

It was dawn, or close to it; the clock in Xavier's room with its rotating gold spheres read half past four. Outside, the sky was just beginning to lighten. In summer he would have heard the blackbirds beginning to sing the dawn chorus. Charles always associated that first chirruping with insomnia, the acceptance of a final failure: _we won't be falling asleep at all now, if we haven't yet._ Now that he was getting older, he was getting to know these dawn hours better, learning the shadings of the sky, the small sounds throughout the house as the others began to stir. He was sitting awake in his chair by the window, looking out over the green pastures and half reading a book about Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

He'd been up since three, and now he shut off the lamp sitting beside him, changing the colours of the room from mellow gold to soft greys, the morning light seeping in cold.

Cold indeed; Charles wondered if the insulation around the window needed to be replaced, reaching out to feel the window frame for stray breezes. Then he paused, distracted by the mental sounds of someone else awake at this hour. It was at the very edges of his range, but he could pick up the crunching and crumbling of someone's inner turmoil.

He could sense repetitive thoughts, tumbling over each other, thoughts that circled and collapsed on one another. The thinker was too far off for him to be able to hear specifics, but the ingrown pattern of the thoughts, censorious but irrational, like a tangle of thorns -- he knew who it was. Listening to Joel think was like reading Kafka.

There might be good reasons why Joel was out at four in the morning, but Charles decided he didn't like the smell of things. He closed his eyes and called Jean, loud enough to wake her.

Jean soon responded, her thoughts still bleary from sleep. _Professor? Something wrong?_

 _I hate to disturb you on a Saturday -- I know you've been hard at work all week. But this concerns me._ He sent Jean the tangles of thoughts he'd heard, encapsulated like a specimen in a museum. _Do you think you could bring him back to the mansion?_

 _Oh God. That kid._ Jean's thoughts felt sympathetic, even as tired as she was. _Of course, yeah, I'll go find him. He could probably use a couple of Klonopin to settle him down. I don't need to wake Scott, I don't think._

Charles, hoping he wasn't sending her off on a fool's errand, wheeled off to check Joel's room, stopping by the door to put a blanket over his lap against the chill.

* * *

Jean was actually a tiny bit put out. She _didn't_ want to drag herself out of bed and get dressed in sweats and a winter coat on her day off. There was deep snow on the ground and they'd been having a cold snap for more than a week -- _who goes out in this weather?_ She wasn't mad at Joel or the Professor, she just...wanted to stay in bed. Scott was barely awake, and the minute she told him he was good to go back to sleep he did so. He rolled over in bed, taking some of her designated covers with him, and his breathing deepened again. Traitor.

She kept the thread of Joel's thoughts in the back of her mind, and she figured that if she lost the signal then it was probably safe to put the chore on hold; he couldn't get himself into any kind of trouble when he wasn't physical, and would materialise sometime later, probably back at the mansion. But she got her boots out of the front closet and zipped her phone into an inner pocket of her coat, after checking the weather app and curling her lip at the temperature reading.

She didn't know exactly where she was going, just trying to home in on the signal she was getting, which wasn't particularly easy. She could pick up on sensory impressions of deep snow (no kidding), the little creek full of papery reeds, the grove of pines. Head roughly east, then.

* * *

Charles opened the door, warily, as if he expected the body to be in there. Not _the body_ , no, there was no body yet. He was sure of it. But there might be other things in there, other signs of suffering and illness, and he proceeded slowly. So as not to hurt himself.

The room was clean and quiet, though, and the bed was stripped, covers folded neatly at the foot. Joel's books were all put away in boxes, except for one that lay open on the desk.

It was a large, heavy book of photography. The picture on the open page was of a polished white marble figure, a bishop, with blind lidless eyes staring out in an expression that looked like horror. Only once Charles had been looking at the picture for a few moments did the optical illusion resolve itself: the statue's eyes were supposed to be closed, but when looked at in a certain way they seemed to be wide open, without pupils or iris. The caption read, "Marble effigy of François Xavier de Laval-Montmorency (1623-1708), first Bishop of Quebec. The impressive tomb is in the Basilica, Quebec City."

There was also a long quote identified as part of Colombière's eulogy of Laval. The last sentence was marked very lightly by a fine pencil-stroke in the margin:

> _"It was with good reason that Providence permitted him to be called Francis, for the virtues of all the saints of that name were combined in him -- the zeal of Saint Francis Xavier, the charity of Saint Francis of Sales, the poverty of Saint Francis of Assisi, the self-mortification of Saint Francis of Borgia; but poverty was the mistress of his heart, and he loved her with incontrollable transports."_

This seemed an awful lot like a message, obviously, but Charles could not decide if it was intended as a compliment or a rebuke.

The premeditated quality of these proceedings, especially the stripped bed, was not encouraging. Joel had made an impulsive attempt once before, as Visineau had recorded, but this was not an impulse.

What would he have chosen? Not a gun. Something slower, and perhaps something that would give him time to reconsider. Charles looked at the frozen face of Laval. He could not unsee the white staring eyes, and he suspected that this, rather than the paragraph about the saints, was Joel's real message -- that Charles was missing something. Blind to it.

 _Damn him._ If Joel lived, Charles resolved, he was going to stop coddling the boy in session and playing along with these little games. For that was what they were: Antigone, Trudeau, and Laval; meat rotting in the National Gallery; lists of saints in a eulogy. It was time for therapy that cut through to the heart of things. Joel was hiding, hiding behind a few paper-thin cultural differences. He knew what he was doing. Giving Charles a history lesson, while the psychotherapist rushed to do his homework, as if reading up on Trudeau was ever going to explain anything about McCree. Visineau had been right -- Joel resisted therapy. Whether he did it in invisibility, silence and vague statements, or trails of clues that wound through history and religion did not matter.

Like Erik, Charles realised, as silly as it sounded to compare Erik with the shy Catholic boy from Ottawa with his naïve beliefs in law and order. Erik was not in the business of making his feelings plain, and neither was Joel. Both preferred to step around the subject, dropping hints, deflecting questions and feigning ignorance. Both were more comfortable debating the principles of the rights of man than discussing what the problem really was.

Joel was a failure at chess, but perhaps Charles had still underestimated him.

How frustrating that he'd had stripped the room, Charles thought, not leaving any clues but this deliberate one. Then he saw, on the bedside table, two envelopes.

One was addressed to Charles, the other to Joel's parents. Charles hesitated for a moment, then opened the one addressed to him. Written at the top was the odd legend, P.P.C./J.M.J. He understood the first one, _pour prendre congé_ , 'for leave-taking', an old term of etiquette for a letter or a calling card left to say goodbye. Bizarre that a seventeen-year-old would even know about that...but then he remembered that the diplomatic corps still used calling cards. It wasn't impossible that Joel had come across the custom, with the company his parents kept, and thus he was alluding to it as an odd little joke. J.M.J. meant nothing to Charles, though.

> Dear Dr. Xavier,
> 
> I'm very grateful to you for everything you've tried to do for me, but I've been wasting everyone's time long enough. I am not going to get any better. If I thought there was a chance that I could ever be useful, I would put up with the pain, but I really can't be fixed. I wish I could live, but I don't deserve to, and it's time for everyone else to cut their losses. It would be cowardly to keep on living when I'll never be able to contribute anything to society. You did your best and this is not your fault.
> 
> My body is in the Titicus Reservoir west of the mansion. If it's found, please have it sent back to Ottawa; all my money is in cash in the drawer, and my parents will cover the rest of the costs. I am very sorry for bringing attention to the school like this, and I hope you can forgive me.
> 
> All my gratitude and respect,
> 
> Joel McCree

Charles opened the drawer of the bedside table, and found a thick stack of cash bound together with a rubber band, and another, much smaller stack of Canadian bills underneath. Probably about four hundred dollars in all, so clearly Joel had been to the bank.

Charles slammed the drawer shut and threw the wad of bills at the wall, where they made a disappointingly small thuck sound and fell behind the table. He was irrationally furious, as well as terrified. Joel had done his homework, even down to looking up the name of the reservoir, which everyone in the mansion just called "the water." Hiding his intent for days, weeks maybe. Had Charles deigned to investigate internally a little bit, he would have figured that out easily. Unethical, yes, but he had held back and now the boy might be dead.

But it wasn't only cold-blooded to go through so much trouble to arrange this, Charles thought: it was the work of someone so desperately lonely that he couldn't conceive that anyone would actually be worried about him. Joel thought that Charles would lose one of his children to suicide and that his first concern would be the expense of dealing with the body. 

Charles calmed himself with an effort and reached out to Jean. _I've found the note. He's at the reservoir._

Then he happened to glance at the back of the suicide note, on which was scrawled, diagonal and haphazard:

  
_I am helpless in the grip of my own ugliness._

* * *

Jean had been headed in that direction anyway, but when she she heard that message from Xavier she started to run. The snow was about two feet deep when she stumbled off into it from the ploughed path, and after sinking in and realising how much it would slow her down, she lifted herself into the air instead. From that vantage point, hovering over the field, she caught sight of the tracks and took off toward them.

The reservoir was frozen over, but only close to shore. Further out, the open water gleamed blue on nice days and lead grey on cloudy mornings like this one. There was a trail drawn through the deep, soft snow going straight to the reservoir's edge, and Jean wondered why Joel had walked through it at all -- like her, he could have used his powers to skip that discomfort. But maybe the discomfort was part of the purpose.

The snow was shallower on the ice, which was thick and black where the wind had blown it clean. It was solid as concrete when she landed there for a moment, taking her weight easily; you'd need a chainsaw to get through that, she thought. But there was a scrubby little island further out at the end of a spit of land, obscuring her view of the rest of the reservoir. 

She rose into the air again, and beyond the trees and brush on the little island, she saw a ribbon of open water. She could feel Joel's presence somewhere close, but she didn't have the Professor's strength, couldn't just freeze him or force him to walk back to solid ground.

By the edge of the ice, she found a small pile of personal effects: scarf, hat, gloves, a phone nestled inside. The churning dark water at the edge of the ice splashed once, the ice cracked, and Jean saw hands come out of the water.

The hands were balled into fists, and while a sheet of the ice began to break away, the body in the water began to pull itself out. Very carefully, but with determination, not floundering. The ice sheet wasn't solid enough, but Joel pulled himself closer to the thick ice and struggled for a moment before getting himself up elbow-high on the ice.

"Jesus _Christ,_ " Jean whispered and dropped down to the solid ice, telekinetically pulling the boy the rest of the way out of the ice. 

He was soaked but fully conscious, face pale and hard. "I'm getting out, I can do it," he mumbled when she sat him up.

"Yeah, maybe you could have, but _Jesus_ , Joel," she said, unzipping his soaked parka. He wasn't wet underneath it. "This thing saved your goddamn life, you know that? The water didn't have time to penetrate the down, it gave you enough buoyancy to make it out."

"I was wrong, I was wrong, I did the wrong thing," he was whispering. "I don't want to die, I was wrong."

"Good." That was the only thing she could say; she was horrified by how close he'd come. It wouldn't have taken more than thirty seconds for the current to sweep him under the ice where he wouldn't have been able to save himself...or if his coat had been thinner, or if she hadn't been there to help him extricate himself from the ice. "Okay. Your core is dry, that's good. That's where most of your heat comes from. You're gonna wear my hat and gloves, they're dryer than yours. Your pants and shoes are soaked, though, so I'm going to carry you back to the mansion and we'll see if there's a hypothermia situation that needs a hospital."

"I'm sorry, Dr. Grey."

"Don't be sorry," she replied automatically, but then thought about it for a few moments as she picked up his phone. It was dead, maybe from being in a wet pocket. "Okay, no, maybe you should be sorry, because you really scared me, you know that? You scared the Professor too. I forgive you, but you scared us."

"I know," he said as she took up his weight and rose into the air. "I knew when I hit the water that I had to come back. Sorry."

* * *

"Survival instincts are a hell of a drug," Hank said outside the infirmary. "He's actually fine, believe it or not. I was expecting some frostbite, maybe worst case scenario irregular heartbeat as a result of hypothermia. But no, he was wearing practical clothes up until he intended to dump himself in the drink, and once he fell in he made the decision quickly enough to try to get out. Like Jean said, the good folks at L.L. Bean make a damn fine winter coat, and it made him bob back to the surface instead of sinking deeper. That probably protected his heart from the shock of the cold too. So..." He shrugged. "Moderate hypothermia, which is responding well to rewarming with heated blankets and warm IV fluids. His heart seems completely healthy. I know it sounds counter-intuitive when the patient made a suicide attempt, but in this case, I actually see no reason to disturb him by sending him to the ER."

"The only reason I would is if his parents insist," Charles said, rubbing his temples. "But you're right, he's on site with his own therapist and at least one physician, so he'll do better here than in a hospital. I'm not looking forward to talking to his parents, but they'll be glad to know he's all right."

"Emphasise the part where an Xavier graduate was the one who pulled him out?" Hank suggested.

"There is that. May I speak with him?"

"Go right ahead," said Hank, opening the infirmary door.

Inside, Joel was swathed in blankets, the IV pump making its steady _whhhshh-shhhff_ sound in and out. He looked pale, tired, and shaken. His arms were wrapped in gauze up to the wrist, the glimpse of white showing under his sleeves. "Sorry," he said when Charles came in.

"You could try 'hello,'" Charles said, smiling a little to take the edge off the comment. "Are you comfortable?"

"Um, yeah. Just tired now."

"What's this here?" Charles pointed to the gauze.

"Oh." Joel glanced down in surprise as if he'd forgotten. "Before I headed out I kind of...carved up my arms some. It's fine."

Hank hadn't even mentioned that, distracted by the hypothermia issue, so Charles concluded that it probably _was_ fine, medically speaking; the cuts couldn't be that deep. "Do you do that often?"

"No. I just..." Joel trailed off for a moment, then finished the sentence: "Felt like I should try. Like, traditional method. I just couldn't force myself to go deep enough."

"So you were determined to make the attempt, and first you tried cutting, and then when you were unsuccessful, you decided to try drowning. Drowning and freezing in combination, I suppose."

"Yeah."

"And you didn't come to me and tell me you were having these urges."

Joel picked at the binding on the edge of the blanket. "No, sir."

"Why not?"

The reply was very quiet. "I didn't want you to worry."

"I see." Charles wheeled closer to the bed. "Joel, I'm going to be honest, because I'm not sure that Dr. Visineau was ever honest with you. I don't believe that he ever said to you what I'm saying now: I don't understand you. We've been talking, almost every day, and yet you managed to plot this completely without my knowledge. So yes, in that sense, you kept me from worrying about this particular outcome. But you do realise that those weeks of not worrying are a tradeoff, yes? That afterward I would have spent the rest of my life in sadness, guilt, and regret?"

"I'm sorry--"

"You're saying that without thinking, Joel. You're apologising as a sort of apotropaic gesture -- do you know the term? It means to ward something off, like a superstitious person throwing salt over their shoulder, an action which is meaningless in itself but which they hope will scare evil forces away. I think you throw the word 'sorry' around even before you've fully understood what the situation is. I'm asking you to listen instead. Can you do that?"

"I'm s--yeah. I can." Joel was red in the face, looking down at his hands.

"Thank you," Charles said. "As a telepath, I've always believed that it's wrong to read minds without permission...or rather, I _didn't_ always believe it, and I had to come to that understanding through experience and thought. I believed it was especially crucial not to overstep this boundary when working with patients, in the years when I did clinical work. And yet now I almost wonder if I was wrong to have taken such a firm stance...do you know, if I hadn't heard you at the very limits of my telepathy, you might well have succeeded? You disappear so often that you wouldn't be missed for days. If I hadn't heard you, I wouldn't have awakened Jean."

"I wasn't expecting people to come after me," Joel said, still not looking up. "I was ready to make it back on my own. I wanted to come back."

"I'm more glad than I can say that you did. But it was only by luck that you survived at all. You were tempting fate," said Charles. "And knowing that, for me as your caretaker here, is absolutely terrifying."

A long silence, and then Joel said hesitantly, "In school, they used to...they told us, we saw those old filmstrips. What you do if you fall through ice. I don't know if they do that everywhere. But they told us to stay low and distribute your weight across -- they explained, anyway." Another very long pause. "I was actually surprised that I remembered as well as I did. I didn't feel afraid, just very...really sure about everything. I've never been that sure before, about wanting to stay alive."

"I think, even before that moment, you didn't want to die," said Charles. "I think you wanted to make a credible attempt, a real one, but that you were still hoping it would fail. That some outside force would make the decision for you. The eyes of Bishop Laval are only closed, they're not blind."

Joel looked up at that, Charles caught the flicker of expression from the boy's usual studied deadpan to genuine blankness. "What?"

Just then, Jean came in, pale and tense, the tendons standing out in her neck. Hank was behind her. She had her iPad under her arm and she bent over to place it gently in Joel's lap, resting a hand on his shoulder. "Bad news. Really bad. I'm sorry."

The iPad was displaying the front page of the _National Post_ , and she'd probably brought it down to the infirmary as a nice gesture, meaning to give Joel something to look at until Hank gave the go-ahead for him to go back to his room. Instead she'd been the literal bearer of bad news.

On the app's front page was a photo of an attractive suburban house, with a mailbox at the end of the driveway blown inside out, aluminium and yellow plastic scattered on the sidewalk. In the background were an ambulance and a fire truck. The headline was the single word **MASSACRE.**

"What is it?" Charles asked Jean.

She shook her head, getting her phone out of her pocket to thumb through Twitter. Hashtag _#prayforottawa_ , Charles could see on the screen. "One human rights official killed by a mail bomb, two RCMP officers killed, one member of Parliament killed, and one Senator kidnapped."

"Who?" Joel demanded.

"Canadian Front for Humanity, apparently," said Hank. "They gave a statement to the media claiming responsibility."

"No, who was kidnapped?"

"Names haven't been released yet, I'm keeping an eye on Twitter here to see if anything shows up. They're informing the next of kin."

"Jesus God," Joel whispered, scanning the article. "Two Mounties, Jesus, right on the Hill."

Charles wheeled closer to the bed, but there wasn't much comfort he could offer. Joel was flickering at the edges, not tangible enough to even offer him a telepathic impression of calm and consolation.

Joel was scanning the articles but then stopped, fingertips against the screen. "Marin Leavitt, oh my God-- _him_? They killed Marin Leavitt?"

"Did you know him?" said Hank.

"My dad's friend. Why the fuck would they do that to him? CHRC never does anything. Jesus."

Joel was already in tears, and Charles handed him the small box of tissues that was sitting on the small movable table by the bed. "I'm very sorry, Joel, this is horrendous."

Joel took the box of tissues but did nothing with them. His voice was raw and cracking. "Why release _his_ name and not the Senator's? Fucking _National Post_ , I swear to God..."

Then, to Charles' surprise, Hank bent over Joel and pulled him into a tight hug. It was awkward, all elbows and fists, but Hank held on and when they broke apart, Joel was red-eyed and Hank had a faint sheen of snot on his arm.

The picture of Parliament Hill in the news article was almost a twin to the fine photograph of the Parliament buildings that Charles had seen in the heavy book on Joel's desk, the one labelled with a quote from a poem: _"The far-off city, towered and roofed in blue / The bell-tongued city with its glorious towers."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book is Roloff Beny's _To Everything There Is a Season_ ; Beny captions a photograph with the quote at the end, which is put together from two sonnets by Archibald Lampman, "The City" and "Winter Uplands."


	6. October Crisis

_1\. I feel I am writing the most important letter of my life._  
_2\. At the moment I am in perfect health. I am well-treated, even with courtesy._  
_3\. I insist that the police stop all their searches to find me. If they succeeded this would result in a murderous shootout from which I shall certainly not come out alive._  
—Pierre Laporte, letter to Robert Bourassa

The Canadian Front for Humanity were a small group, and the only people who paid attention to them were the more dedicated mutant activists, a few RCMP who kept half an eye on them, and the Front themselves.

But they made their name well known that Saturday.

Police found twelve small mail bombs in the city of Ottawa that day; most were so poorly made that they didn't go off, but four of the twelve did. One injured the assistant of a Supreme Court judge; one went off prematurely in a pile of mail, causing damage to the door of an office in the East Block; one killed an Irish setter named Tuesday, who belonged to the MP for Ottawa South. Tuesday was fond of chewing on paper, particularly padded envelopes, and she often made sure to attack any packages as soon as they were delivered.

The last bomb killed Marin Leavitt, Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, a devoted public servant and activist. He was the first casualty, dying in hospital at seven in the morning with severe injuries to the face and neck. Had he not bent forward to get his fat Saturday newspaper out of the yellow Citizen-branded mailbox, he might have lived.

This alone would have been enough to cause panic in the capital, but there was more to come.

In the East Block of the Parliament buildings, where a number of senators had their offices, the Honourable Dean Henstock was meeting Senator Jim McCree just prior to going out to lunch.

Dean Henstock, an MP for northern Ontario, was Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, and was Anishinaabe himself -- which was unusual for an Indian Affairs minister, a job that had always mostly gone to white politicians. Henstock was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his sixties, with greying hair and frightening Vulcan eyebrows, and he was widely admired for his sensible politics and integrity (by Ottawa standards, anyway). There were bumper stickers in the city that read DEAN HENSTOCK FOR PM, which was either naïve or as cynical as you could get, but Dean didn't have anything to do with those. He wasn't about to throw the rest of his life away on a futile ambition like that.

Jim McCree was a workaholic, which was why he was on the Hill on a Saturday morning to begin with. Jim was checking his phone and Dean was locking the office door when the gunman came around a corner and raised his weapon, an assault rifle of a type that should never have been available in Canada in the first place. Dean noticed first, shouted, and was shot through the chest. Security footage showed McCree standing frozen by the door, his phone still in his hand, but there was little that he could have done. Long, long moments after the first shot was fired, witnesses heard him yelling, "He's dead, Jesus Christ, he's dead!"

The RCMP officers came on the scene -- two of them, junior constables both. The first officer shot and missed, lodging a bullet in the office door. The gunman shot the first Mountie dead, and managed to injure the second before executing him as well. The cameras showed a brief scuffle between McCree and the gunman at that point, but the man was not disarmed.

The gunman proceeded to lead McCree out of the building. Backup was on its way, and since there was a hostage, the rest of security made the decision to keep their distance until more help arrived. Perhaps wisely, perhaps foolishly -- an inquiry would decide. None of the officers were experienced with this sort of thing; security in the Parliament buildings was notoriously lax, at least when it counted, and mostly when crazies came in they made a scene in the House of Commons on a weekday, with Hansard reporters watching. Weirdness in the East Block was far less common, and discouraged by the fact that the locations of Senators' offices weren't publicised.

In a blue '03 Ford, the gunman tore through the lunchtime traffic on Wellington and crossed the Pont du Portage Bridge into Gatineau, Quebec. Backup was delayed, the officers in the East Block stayed put, and they lost him: the Ford was found at the side of a residential street in Hull, and the only eyewitness was a fifteen-year-old girl who described the new stolen car as a "black and dirty" four-door sedan, an unhelpful description. McCree was still alive at the time they switched cars, she said; he was tied up in the trunk.

* * *

Some of this was in the paper, but many of the details came from Joel's mother. He called home and spent over an hour on the phone, asking questions and repeating the answers to Charles. Several other relatives had already invaded the McCree home, it seemed, but as his father's only son, his presence would obviously be required.

Besides, it was almost Christmas.

"What? Jesus... No, I know they couldn't do anything. Still... He is? Where are you going to put him up? No, I'd rather you didn't. Yeah, I might be. I don't know yet. I mean I have to, but I don't know when... Did I meet her? I don't remember."

After it seemed that most of the news had been shared, Charles left him and went up to his suite to make his own phone call. It was almost five o'clock, and the sun was setting. A gleaming, clear evening, the sky cold and gas-jet blue, suffused with golden light at the horizon. 

Charles found the number he was looking for, and he listened to the rings, over 300 miles away.

_"Allô?"_

"Good evening, Dr. Visineau. Charles Xavier at Westchester, here."

"Ah." One of those sounds that carried a great weight of meaning: sadness, relief, sympathy. "I'm glad you called, Charles."

"How's the weather there?"

"Beautiful," he said. "Cold, but a pretty cold. Terrible things always happen on the nicest days, somehow. I remember September 11th, how blue the sky was. Is Joel all right?"

"No." Charles told him what had happened, finishing with, "...and now he has this to deal with."

"Well. It wasn't unexpected -- he's tried it before, and his issues are...severe. I spoke to his mother this morning. They don't know very much, but the whole region is on the alert. Will he be coming home?"

"Joel? I expect so," said Charles. "I'm concerned about him having support while he's there."

"I'd be more concerned about -- oh. But I suppose it's all right."

"What?"

Visineau laughed ruefully. "I was going to say, I'd be concerned about his safety, and then I remembered that it would be hard for someone to hold on to Joel if he didn't want to be held."

"True," said Charles, "But he could be taken by surprise, just as those policemen were. Joel's reflexes aren't very remarkable."

This was a guess, on Charles' part, based on observation, but he was sure that tests in the Danger Room would show the same result. He had toyed with the idea that the Joel might one day be a valuable addition to the team, since his abilities had so much potential to be useful, but he knew that Joel just wasn't the type. Slow, gentle, panicky, and absent-minded -- they could work around just one of those qualities, but not all of them.

And yet there was more to the X-Men than just combat. Charles wasn't ready to give up on the idea that every one of his students would one day contribute to the cause of mutant rights. Even if their contribution was just a normal life.

"He might not be a target, really. Everyone who was attacked was an ordinary baseline human," Visineau pointed out. "They only touched politicians who had publicly made statements in support of mutants. Dean Henstock not so much, although I believe he was supportive of mutants in a general way...he had a good voting record, anyhow. But he was a victim of opportunity. Lynn Brioux, whose dog got killed, she was in charge of the Brioux Report on the safety of mutants in schools...the other senator who received a mail bomb, her daughter is here at St. Rita's. She's a pyrokinetic -- and she's been quite a challenge, believe me. I could go on, but everyone involved had some stake in the mutant issue. Mutants themselves, no one has attacked."

Charles considered this. "They're trying to make it seem dangerous for mutants and non-mutants to form alliances?"

"I doubt they thought that far. They just wanted to punish people for being mutie-lovers." A sigh. "My kids here all know that. They're worried for _us_ , myself and the staff here. I mean, I am assuming motives here. Maybe mutants are in danger too. This kind of fanatic, they strike who they can reach. St. Rita's is small enough that we can bear a siege, but it's dangerous even so."

Charles had forgotten, for a moment, that Visineau had his own students to take care of. "What sort of security do you have there?"

Visineau made a dismissive noise. "Less than they have on Parliament Hill, I'll tell you that. Forty troubled mutants, six nurses, four Oblates, and building staff. We'll beat intruders over the head with the _Commentary of St. Jerome._ "

"You honestly aren't worried?" Just the thought of being that vulnerable would have made Charles' hair stand on end, if he still had any. "Have you ever considered that this might happen?"

"Oh, we have cameras and alarms and the usual things. What else should we have? Guns? Couldn't if we wanted to. And I never thought we'd need more than that," said Visineau. "When Ottawans don't like you, they have municipal hearings -- they don't break down your door and try to kill you."

"Until yesterday."

"Until yesterday." The priest's voice was quiet. "But it was still not our door that they came to. We check our mail. We check our visitors. There's nothing else to do."

Charles was tempted to tell Visineau that this was the wakeup call for mutants in Canada, and that if he ignored this he would be betraying the children for whom St. Rita's was founded...and that temptation in itself was strange. It was Erik's voice in his memory again, Erik's righteous anger. ( _Oh yes, my friend, I never denied that the anger was righteous._ ) But Charles had always argued strenuously for legitimate defence -- he hated the strawmen that Erik would set up, his emotional arguments: _"Why don't we lie down and die for them? That's what you'd like, isn't it, Charles? Or annihilate ourselves, and save them the trouble."_ Charles had never held that position, and Erik knew it. The X-Men policed themselves and defended themselves, and would never submit to outside forces that sought their destruction, whether human or mutant. Charles, like Thoreau, valued self-sufficiency, and if necessary, civil disobedience.

But Visineau very nearly _was_ the passive caricature that Erik loved to rail against. Only worse, because he was human. Charles remembered Joel's serene statement that the law protects life. What lay behind such thinking? Sheer naïveté and idealism? Lack of imagination? Reluctance to get one's hands dirty? What would Erik say to someone like Visineau? 

Answer: nothing. He wouldn't waste his time. Wouldn't waste it on a mere human who got in his way, and who (in his eyes, at least) dared to espouse a sort of auto-genocide for another race.

And what would Charles say?

Also nothing. There was real grief in the man's voice, the sort of grief that magnified the small things of life and suspended the usual rules, routines, and attitudes. It was not a time for politics, or even for principle. Charles could only imagine what things were like for those forty mutant children at St. Rita's, who were seeing their relatives and their few public allies attacked for standing by them.

"What can we do to help?" he asked.

"I'm happy just to have a call from a colleague, Charles. There's not much else you can do from down there."

"I suppose you'd be too busy to keep an eye on Joel if he went back up there for a while?" Charles ventured.

Visineau made a discomfited noise. "I could fit in an appointment or two this week, but if he's in the hospital now, he will need more than that. Perhaps you could send somebody with him?"

Charles thought about that. Jean and Scott were far too busy, and the loss of this one Sunday was considerable for them. Hank more or less made his own schedule, but he barely knew Joel. Charles could, perhaps, make some adjustments to his planner and have Scott fill in for physics lessons. "If he does go, I could stay with him. For a few days, at least."

"That's good to hear," said Visineau, sounding relieved. "You know I don't mind being available for him, and I'm in close contact with the family. They're gathering close for the siege too. But he needs more right now, and you can't take care of everyone at once. _Eh bien_ , you know how it is."

"So I do," Charles said, and bade the priest goodnight.

* * *

Hank had released Joel from the infirmary, and Joel was now back in his own room. Charles knocked, although the door was half-open, and he got a mumbled _yeah_ from within. Joel's laptop was open at the foot of the bed, his browser on Google News, and Joel was half-invisible, his mind unavailable for comment. It was strange that you couldn't exactly see _through_ him when he was in this state; he wasn't translucent, like ghosts in the movies. Rather, it was as if you could see _around_ him, or past him, as if he were the blurry foreground of a photograph taken with a long depth of field. The eye seemed to slide right past him. Not for the first time, Charles wondered exactly how that power worked. Hank was uncertain now about his alternate dimension theory and was toying with some quantum mechanics idea, but he was the first to admit that the data was simply insufficient for a proper explanation.

Joel himself had no opinion on the subject, and no useful information. Charles suspected that he had gained some control over his powers, in the month or so that he had been at the school, and he believed that these days, Joel chose to disappear more often than not.

"You're thinking of going home for a while," Charles said.

"I think my mother wants me to," Joel said, not looking up.

"You don't want to go?"

Joel shook his head. "I want to go."

"But?"

Joel just shrugged, but Charles could guess that the boy had little energy for dealing with a family crisis, or a national one for that matter. Charles could sympathise. "You're too tired to think about it?"

"Yeah," Joel said, but there was a rare warmth in it, as if he were glad to be understood.

Neither of them said anything for awhile. The school's usual evening sounds went on in the background, and Joel closed his eyes briefly. He was tired, but Charles wanted to have this discussion.

There was, unfortunately, no easy way to begin it. "Are you ever planning on talking to me, Joel?"

"I'm sorry."

"Remember what we talked about earlier. Apologies are not what I want. An apology is not a conversation."

Joel took a breath, then let it out, stifling another _sorry._ He retreated a little deeper into his aphanic state, becoming just a trembling in the air. A crack in the atmosphere, perhaps. His voice in this state was distant, barely audible. "I don't know what else I can say. I don't know what you want."

"I want you to feel comfortable enough to be honest with me," said the Professor, choosing his words carefully.

"Honest about _what_?" There was a flare of anger in his voice that seemed to surprise Joel as much as it surprised Charles. He solidified abruptly, and Charles felt a burst of agitation, like the static you hear when turning on a radio. "Are you accusing me of something here? You think I've been lying to you?"

"In a manner of speaking, you have," said Xavier, getting angry himself. "I've been asking you over and over, every session, if you were having thoughts of harming yourself. You withheld that from me. You told me you were fine, and you told me you didn't need any extra help. You said that even though you knew otherwise -- by definition, that _is_ lying. I'm sure your intentions were not malicious, but the actions themselves were nonetheless dishonest. I expect you to be truthful with me, as a precondition of therapy. I expect to know what you're really feeling. You spent time planning this."

"So what, I can't have any private thoughts, I can't keep anything to myself?" Joel said.

"Thoughts about _this_ , Joel, about matters of life and death," Charles snapped, and then went on when he should have stopped: "And as I said, I do not believe that you ever truly wanted to die. You wanted to send me a message."

That was over the line and unprofessional, but Joel's response at least had some fire in it. "Yeah, that is _rich._ You have no goddamn idea what I wanted," he said. "None, zip, zero! Isn't that what you told me before? Like, sorry, but I didn't try to kill myself _at_ you. It actually wasn't about you at all, but how would you know? You never even asked me why I did it or how I felt."

"Would you have told me anything if I had?" said Charles. "If I was wrong feel free to correct me."

"You're wrong."

"I need more than that, Joel. And suicide _is_ an aggressive act, very often. It's an expression of anger turned inward. You left a note addressed to me -- how can you say it wasn't a gesture directed at me, at least in some way?"

Joel curled up with his arms around his knees. He was quiet for a second, then said, "I wasn't angry. I just had to do it. I knew I had to. It wasn't about being angry -- it wasn't even about wanting to do it. Maybe it wasn't even about dying."

And he started to dig his fingernails into the skin of his forearms, and Charles' anger died down as he remembered what he was supposed to be doing. He was a doctor, Joel was a patient, and it was not his place to rage like a betrayed parent. Nor was he meant to play psychic and try to guess what was happening. Telepathy had been a dangerous crutch for him as a young man, but he had not acted like this with a patient in years. What he had said would require a genuine apology, but not tonight -- tonight something else was more important, because for the first time in days (weeks, even?), Joel had volunteered an insight. He had given it without being asked a direct question, without Charles having to guess where the landmines were buried.

"Tell me what you were feeling," he said, quietly.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"It's too..." Joel trailed off.

"Too what?"

"I'm thinking."

He thought, and then spoke slowly, the words coming haphazard and careful at once, as if he were feeling his way through a dark room. "Poison. It's poisonous. It's -- it's so bad you can't use normal words to describe it. Like in old books people say they feel _wretched_ and before, I didn't know what that was. Now I'm like, oh yeah, _wretched_ just about covers it. I feel ugly, I feel ashamed. And I can't talk about it."

"Why not?" Charles pressed, seeing that particular indrawn look in Joel's now-visible face, the look that said a patient was already in motion, somewhere in the deep cavities of the head, and the only thing needful was a gentle push. Permission.

"I don't understand it. If I understood I could say. But it comes so suddenly. There aren't any words or reasons. There's nothing that happens outside. It just descends. No -- it rises up, like fog from the river. It comes up. All kinds of things come up. Bad memories. Weird ideas."

"Like what?"

"Like--" Joel struggled for a moment, as if he couldn't make his mouth move in synch with his brain. "God, like what! I really believed it was right to, to do what I did. Necessary. My duty. My duty to society. My mom asked why I thought I couldn't go on. Sure I could go on. I've gone on this long. When you're sick -- Christ, this is going to sound like a pun -- when you're sick for a long time, you learn to be patient. You learn that everything just takes a long-ass time. And I've never thought I deserved to be happy. But I thought it was _right_ to do this. _Dulce et decorum est._ I was convinced."

"Why?"

"Because I'm nothing." It was almost like Charles wasn't there at all, as if Charles were the one who could become completely imperceptible. Joel's voice was painful to listen to, a rattle coming from low in the throat. "I'm nothing and I waste people's time. It would make things easier for everyone."

"Easier for who?"

"Everyone. You. My father."

"Why him?"

"He worries."

Charles waited for more, but there was nothing. In Joel's mind, only darkness, blank as a mine shaft. Of course it was wrong to pry. But.

"I don't mind," Joel said dully. He was always aware of Charles's telepathic presence, no matter how subtle.

Temptation. "Are you sure?"

"I wouldn't want to see someone else's thoughts," he said. "That's the scarier thing, to me, the idea of knowing what someone thinks of me. But just letting you see mine is...that's not as bad. I just -- I want someone to understand. Maybe it will make more sense to you than to me."

So Charles reached out his right hand and gently pressed the fingertips to the boy's left temple.

* * *

The darkness fell around him, thick, showery, and soft. Like wet snow, maybe, but hot and prickling, like a fever that makes you want to peel off your own skin. He had thought of Joel's mind as a tangle of thorns, and the surface of his thoughts was like that, but here on the inside it was different. The same, but different. A tangle of weeds on a fishing line, which he handed dripping to his father to unravel.

The green bottom of the lake was where the Lucky Strike lure hung waiting, twisting and reflecting back the light. His father kept a tiny bottle of iodine in the tackle box as well, and swabbed it on his son's fingers when the lures scratched him. Joel was not allowed to cut the belly open and lift out the broken pieces of the lure; he could only hold the flashlight, after posing for the camera with the fierce-mouthed pike that had scared him, jetting along behind the boat and baring its teeth around the line. A cruel little predator in the forest of weeds under the lake. The associations of thought were delicate, membranous strands that shimmered when the sun caught them, bright as the lure's mirrors, but Charles kept his attention on the dock where Joel was still holding the flashlight with cold wet hands while the scales flew from the curved knife.

The man with the knife was entirely good. Love and pride twisted together with the barbed wire of resentment and pain. Charles caught an interesting recollection of Joel's father in his formal barrister's robes, waistcoat, and white bands at a Red Mass one year -- Joel was young then, bored and leaning against his father's side, cheek against the black woollen robe. There were other lures of memory here: an indigo ceiling spangled with golden stars, the lily-blossoming statue of St. Joseph, a homily in French. Did that matter? No, it didn't. Charles wouldn't bite; he swam back through to the past, towards the man with the knife, who was entirely good.

Swarms of mosquitoes -- how had he forgotten those? The light jumped as Joel slapped at them. _"Just keep the light steady, Joel, for heaven's sake. We're minutes away from being done."_

_"The bugs..."_

_"What about them? Let them eat. You can spare them a little flesh."_

A small remark, but the boy fell silent and let the insects bite. The man with the knife had not meant it that way.

It took a bit more exploring for Charles to realise the import of that stinging little memory: Joel had been overweight as a child. Charles did not investigate those hot-cheeked gym-class memories too deeply, or the hellish two months at weight loss camp, but they still burned like lye. The memories burned, and then sickness had burned the fat away: purple-black lakes of poisoned blood in the skin became massive thick scars that looked like burns, like torn paper, over his back and chest, over the now visible ribs, creeping up to the collarbone's hollow. The meningitis had struck at thirteen, of course, an illness that devoured the last month of grade eight and a whole summer after that, and left one persistent memory of standing in front of the mirror and examining those irregular ridged scars with his fingers. Sixty pounds gone. It didn't make things any better. When he finally went back to school, Joel was still a peeled nerve trembling in the hallways, hiding in the bathroom and the library, silent as a heretic before the Inquisition when the guidance office asked him what was wrong. How they had interrogated him: _What is it? What is the matter?_ As if there should be some secret, some secret they deserved to know.

Abruptly, Charles felt the familiar _kicking_ sensation that meant he was pushing too hard, suffocating his subject in memory. He retreated slowly to the hospital room, and felt the underwater struggling ease. Removing his hand from the boy's temple, Charles opened his eyes.

He was overcome with a feeling of waste. He could have learned that on his own, he thought. No great mysteries had been solved, nor had he really figured out where that hidden resentment against the Senator lay buried. There was an origin that lay deeper, he thought.

Joel himself was still for a few moments, as if he couldn't move, and then he slowly moved to rub his eyes. "That was...wow. Weird."

"Tell me," said Charles, making one last attempt. "You said before that you _were_ convinced that it was right to end your life. But when you were in the water you knew that you wanted to live. What changed?"

Joel shook his head. "I'm in my right mind now."

Indeed? "But what is different? What do you understand now that you didn't when you were...not in your right mind, to use your phrase?"

"I just know now that I don't have the right to hurt my parents," said Joel. He sounded exhausted, and Charles decided to let him rest.

Before leaving, he told the boy about his plans to accompany him to Ottawa, and Joel accepted that rather glumly. Perhaps he had been hoping to escape for awhile, and Charles almost felt like letting him have that wish. But Charles suspected he might find some answers to Joel's problems in Ottawa. The city had to know something.


	7. Dead to Rights and Wide Awake

_How shall we speak of Canada,_  
_Mackenzie King dead?_  
_The Mother's boy in the lonely room_  
_With his dog, his medium and his ruins?_  
  
_He blunted us._  
—F.R. Scott

The Professor had wisely refused to stay with Joel's Aunt Carmel. She offered, because she was the only one in the family who had a wheelchair-accessible house, and damned if they would let him stay in a hotel; that was for the sort of ruffians who charged admission for wedding receptions. But the Professor dug his heels in, and tirelessly insisted on the phone that he was quite happy to stay in a hotel and wouldn't hear of imposing upon anyone. Joel didn't think that anyone else could have prevailed against his family to refuse their hospitality, but of course Dr. Xavier was the most powerful mind on earth. Even his mother and Aunt Carmel had their limits. The Professor would be staying at the beautiful Château Laurier, in order to spare Carmel's feelings, because to turn her down and then stay at the mere Westin would be an insult.

They were just finished with Customs and were waiting by the baggage carousel when someone ambushed Joel from behind, catching him around the neck with a hug. His mother, of course. She was always doing that -- she would come up from behind and embrace him, and it had always made him panic and struggle until he realised who it was. He remembered being in kindergarten, waiting for his ride home at the end of the day, and having her swoop down upon him and scoop him up, and how he screamed, thinking he was being kidnapped. Everyone had laughed. Of course they laughed, it was stupid. A dumb, nervous, hysterical kid.

Even now, it took him a second to register his mother's perfume and her soft leather raincoat. She kissed him on the top of his head and let him go. "It's so good to see you, darling."

"Yeah. Hi." He straightened his collar.

"How was the flight?"

"Fine. I'm, uh, a little doped up." Dr. Grey had given him Xanax before they left New York, in order to prevent panics and disappearances on the plane.

His mother raised her eyebrows and turned to the Professor. They quite calmly exchanged compliments and pleasantries, as if everything were normal and they were meeting over tea and squares in the living room at home. Attempted suicides and kidnappings notably did not come up. Joel was grateful for that, but it only contributed to the air of unreality that pervaded everything. As if he could unspool the whole weekend and wind it up again so that nothing terrible would have happened. He would resist the terrible conviction that he deserved to die, and the CFH would resist their own desires, and Joel's father would eat lunch with the Honourable Dean Henstock on a Saturday afternoon.

Joel's mother took him by the arm, dragging him back to reality, and walked between him and the Professor through the falling snow out to the parking lot.

They managed to manoeuvre Dr. Xavier into the car with a minimum of undignified manhandling. Joel's mother was a special ed teacher, and had a fair amount of experience with disabled people, particularly children who were far less able to help themselves than the Professor was. They drove from the airport along the curving tree-lined parkway, north to the city. Heavy, wet snow was falling harder now, drumming on the roof.

"Are you happy to be home, Joel?" his mother asked, rather plaintively, from the front seat. She was hurt by his silence, as she always was.

So he answered her, telling the truth. "I really am."

He could never have explained to anyone else, even had he been in the habit of explaining things, how he felt to be home. Returning to the city of his birth. Even when Joel had talked about it with his friend Paul at St. Rita's, he still couldn't explain it. Paul had just shaken his head and said, "No, no, I don't feel like that anywhere. I don't feel like I belong." But it wasn't about belonging, it was just about...and he still couldn't describe it. A city as a whole could have a personality, he thought, and even if you had no friends there you could still love the city itself. You could be somehow compatible with its streets, the smell of the air.

 _You and I, we could be friends,_ the city always seemed to be saying to him. _We're so much alike._

* * *

They dropped the Professor off downtown at the castle-like Château Laurier, then drove up Sussex to Rockcliffe Park, where the house seemed grey and forlorn, the branches of the Norway spruces bowed down with snow.

His mother opened the door herself, but as they were taking off their coats her assistant Amanda appeared at the end of the hallway. She did a double take on seeing Joel. "Oh no, I didn't realise you were going to the airport."

"Didn't I tell you? No, leave the bag. Joel's going to bring it up himself."

Amanda put the bag down again, and actually wiped her hand on her skirt. She did it surreptitiously, but Joel saw it, as he always did. He knew she didn't like him. She addressed his mother, not looking at him. "Lindsay King from the _Citizen_ called at one, wanting to schedule some time to talk."

"Oh Lord." His mother hung up her scarf and sighed. "All right, put her down for six tonight. We can eat at five, talk to her at six, and then still be at Notre Dame for seven. Tell her twenty minutes, absolutely no more."

"On it." Amanda disappeared again down the hall.

His mother checked her watch and told Joel, "She's working until nine -- I know you like to know when she's leaving so you can avoid her. Are you coming to the vigil tonight? You don't have to."

"At Notre Dame? I don't know." The basilica was huge, and there would probably be a big crowd, including photographers who loved to get shots of "the faithful" being brave in a crisis. "No. I can't."

"Well, go sometime, please. It's been ages since you've been to Mass, and I want you to go. You make everything worse by hiding in your room all the time."

Joel nodded automatically. He didn't object to Mass as such, and mostly just hated being in public. But he was supposed to go. "I know. I will."

"Oh, you missed the call from the PM, too. He phoned last night."

The Prime Minister, Tom Sherbrooke, was a sandy-haired man of the type that freckled all over, with tired blue eyes and a soft voice that picked its way across long, rambling sentences. He was sharper than he looked, though, and Joel liked him. So did his father. "What did he have to say?"

"Nothing, of course. But he had to call. He offered condolences, and wished you the best on your exams. Apparently he'll be making a formal statement tonight at seven. Which I'll miss, but I guess you can watch it if you're home."

"I guess."

Joel's mother unzipped his bag and peered inside. " _When_ are you going to learn to pack properly? You've barely got enough things for two days in here."

"Would you leave my stuff alone? I have lots of things here already. More than I need."

"Exactly, because you didn't bring enough things when you left for New York. And your father did most of the packing for you, at that. I wouldn't have had to ship six boxes across the border if you had done some thinking ahead of time."

Joel would have managed at Westchester with his single duffle bag for months, and had only planned to have another two boxes sent after him, but his mother had outdone herself with six boxes -- books, knick-knacks, extra sweaters, a suit and nice shoes in case of formal occasions (ah yes, the annual Mentally Ill Mutants' Viennese Ball, who could forget it?), and so on. That was infuriating, that she would go through his things and pack for him, but there was no point in telling her so. Her rehearsed comeback to that was always, _"If you don't want me rifling through your possessions, do a better job of packing."_

So he just shrugged and took the bag from her, bringing it up to his room.

She actually followed him up the stairs. "Are you sure you're feeling all right? You've seen a doctor? I remember you were sick for a week after the last time."

The last time he'd made an attempt, she meant. He'd had to have his stomach pumped then, which was a completely different situation, and he didn't want to talk about the frozen reservoir tonight. "I'm all right," he muttered.

"Of course you're not _all right_ ," she said impatiently. "Don't be silly. You never want to tell us when you're upset and then things like this happen. Are you happy there in New York? Or -- well, obviously not, but do you think it's helping you to be there?"

He put the bag on his bed, wondering how he could get her to leave. Maybe if he kept his back to her she would take the hint. "Yeah. It's helping. This wasn't Dr. Xavier's fault."

"I know it's not, darling. It's nobody's fault. But -- oh, sweetheart, I wish we could make you better."

How unsatisfying pity was, like drinking seawater. He remembered being in high school, before the seizures and blackouts had started, wishing that people would realise something was wrong with him. Back then, he had thought that if people would just see him and pay attention, they would cut him some slack, and at least he wouldn't feel so alone. But being noticed didn't work out like that. It only made him hideously ashamed. He wanted to swat away all these _darlings_ and _sweethearts._ Leave me alone, he thought. To be totally forgotten, that would be ideal.

His mother stood behind him, rubbing his back the way she did when he was little and couldn't sleep. He didn't move. "You're losing weight again. I can feel every rib."

Joel did not react, could not, could only wait until she moved her hands away. He didn't know why it should bother him to have his own mother touch him, but he was bothered. To be touched was adding too much intimacy to a relationship that was already strained with too much feeling. It embarrassed him, in the old sense of the word: it was an encumbrance, a heavy load that kept him from moving.

She turned him around, forcing him, and he couldn't meet her eyes, so he looked down at the amber beads of her necklace. Polished amber from Poland, flecked with ancient insects, her favourite piece of jewellery. She chucked him under the chin. "Joel. Look at me."

He wished he could have disappeared, but he didn't quite dare do it deliberately. Xavier and Visineau had been wrong about that much. The Xanax fog had lifted; he could have fallen into the Aphanes if he got upset enough. But he just didn't dare to do it on purpose.

"I know this is hard for you," she said, catching his eye, "but it's hard for me too. You know I find it really hurtful when you act like this. When you push me away, as if what you want is all that matters."

"Look, I just -- I'm not pushing anyone away, I just..."

"You just what?"

"I don't know. I don't -- you know I don't like people touching me," he said, all in a rush.

Her face crumpled, so he looked away. Long dead insect legs in amber. "Not even me?"

"No. Sorry." It wasn't that simple, of course; Dr. McCoy had hugged him, in the hospital, and then it had felt okay -- because Joel knew that Dr. McCoy didn't just do that all the time, and because it had been something that was necessary then. Not a big statement, not something possessive to prove a point. His mother's touching often felt like some kind of policy, like a technique she'd come up with that was supposed to gradually make him more sociable. Because it reflected badly on her that he didn't like being touched, and she wasn't going to let him shape her public image that way. _Look at me, I'm a warmly affectionate earth mother._

God, he could be cruel to people, in his own mind. His mother loved him; she didn't deserve this.

She was hurt, but the hurt was for him. "Why not, sweetheart? What caused this?"

"I don't know."

"Did something happen? You would tell me, wouldn't you, if someone ever..."

"Yes, Mom, I would." A lie. It had never happened, not the sort of thing she meant, but if it had, he would never tell a soul. "I'm just messed up, you know that. I just really hate being touched, I don't know why, but it feels dirty, like people are laughing at me...God, I sound so insane."

She nodded, sitting down on his bed and looking at the things on his bedside table. The clock, the radio, a half-popped blister pack of sleeping pills, a rosary, one of his communication cards from St. Rita's. _I cannot participate in activities today._

His mother picked up the rosary and played with it, winding the beads around her thumb. "You say you would tell me, but the kinds of things you say, they're so typical of abused children. I can't help thinking that somebody did hurt you, and now you don't want to talk about it or remember it."

"Mom! Nothing like that ever happened. I don't know if you remember, but I wasn't exactly the most attractive specimen of boyhood--"

She interrupted, "It's not about attractiveness, Joel, you know that. It's about power. Shy children are at risk, they told me, because pedophiles prey on them."

"So I can't do anything right, can I?" That slipped out, and it was clearly a mistake. He shouldn't have allowed this conversation to go on.

His mother shook her head, almost rolling her eyes but covering it by pretending to be very interested in his poster of the young Bob Dylan. "I never said you did something wrong by not being abused, if that was your point."

"No, it was that 'shy children' bit, like -- like me being shy was just another problem for you -- never mind," he said, a little embarrassed. He wasn't sure what he had meant by that remark, actually. "It doesn't matter. But why can't you believe me when I tell you there's nothing there? Everyone's always acting like there must be some secret reason why I'm so fucked up."

"Language."

"Sorry."

She sighed. "Just please consider other people's feelings. You're having a rough time, but you are not the only person in the universe, and other people will sometimes need your support. Even when you don't feel like giving it. Think beyond yourself."

She was right, of course, and now it did hurt enough to drag him down into the white. All the way past the hazy shallows where he could still speak and hear, down to the cold depths where there was nothing. The last thing he saw was his mother sitting on his bed, staring at the now-empty air, with an expression that was mingled frustration, fear, and perhaps a tinge of awe.

Joel was blankly past caring. The arctic night of the Aphanes had never felt so welcoming. _The long night, naked, high over the roof of the world, / Where time seemed frozen in the cold of space._ He disappeared into it, let the cold into him like the story of the sorcerer who let the north wind into his veins. She was right and he was selfish, an invalid brat, but at the moment he was not. At the moment he was nothing at all but the rush of wind high up in the atmosphere, whiteness and loud silence. It didn't matter if he never surfaced again.

No. No. That was the last thing he was aware of, that groping _no_ of perspective trying to right itself.

* * *

When he awoke, it was only early evening. Progress! Joel tried to sit up, and then had to grab the plastic bucket by the side of the bed to throw up, a stream of yellow bile. Coming out of the deep Aphanes affected him that way sometimes: it could cause anything from coughing fits to vertigo and nausea. Dr. McCoy back in New York had not been able to figure out what was going on there, but he had been making noises about doing a barium milkshake test. Joel didn't like the sound of that.

"One would think that something is wrong when use of your power affects you that way," Hank had argued. "A mutation is not an illness."

The clock read 6:59 p.m., and his watch said it was still Monday. Couldn't take any of that for granted. Joel debated going downstairs and turning on the TV, then decided he wasn't up to that. He rolled over and turned on the radio to CBC. The radio was an ancient artefact that had lived at the cottage for many years, with a cracked brown plastic casing that put its origins perhaps in the '60s or '70s. Joel used to keep it on all the time when he was living up here, going in and out of the Aphanes constantly and unable to read books or watch television. Hearing tended to be the last of his senses to cut out, and he liked the unpredictability of the radio more than podcasts or Spotify. 

_"The Prime Minister,"_ announced one of the voices solemnly.

_"Good evening. On Saturday, our nation's capital suffered a terrible blow to safety, human rights, and the rule of law. Four loyal public servants lost their lives: the Honourable Dean Henstock, Marin Leavitt, and Constables David Persey and Michael Shipley. My most sincere condolences go out to their loved ones, and a nation now mourns these devoted and hard-working men. The fate of Senator James McCree remains unknown. His life is in danger, and my thoughts are with his family tonight. But tonight I am speaking to you to send a message: the government of Canada will never allow a man's life to be used for bargaining. The RCMP and regional police from both Ontario and Quebec are actively engaged in finding the headquarters of this terrorist organisation, but we still hope for a peaceful resolution..."_

God, Sherbrooke's speeches were always so lame.

Joel curled up into a foetal position, but it didn't help. Something was churning inside him, the beginnings of a massive stress body-ache or a clusterfuck of panic and rage, and he couldn't deal with that now. He got up and went to the small bathroom that adjoined his room, and checked the medicine cabinet.

The old unfinished SSRI prescriptions were useless. Zoloft, Prozac, Celexa, Paxil, and half a dozen others, none of which had worked. Half a bottle of Oxycocet, but that was for really special occasions. Gravol produced a nice drowsy haze, but tonight it was probably too weak to make a dent. Good old Neo-Citran, comforting -- but that would require boiling water, which meant a trip downstairs. He would have risked it had he been alone in the house, but Amanda was still down there, and would be until nine. No, thank you.

Well, now. A full bottle of Zyprexa, sitting there amongst the impotent anti-depressants. Perfect. Joel had been on Zyprexa for a couple of weeks, until his family and doctors agreed that he had turned into a zombie. But it did have two useful functions: it guaranteed many hours of cavernous, sticky-mouthed sleep, and at least a day afterward out of the reach of emotions.

He dry-swallowed one of the little white pills, and sat down on his bed, waiting for the effects to kick in. Sherbrooke was still talking about the supremacy of law and the greatness of Canada's national police force, despite the urgent need for inquiry concerning the security forces on Parliament Hill. _Et cetera._

Being a zombie wasn't so bad, Joel thought. Especially when you weren't disintegrating all over the place and eating brains. Zyprexa made him hungry, but only the way cows are hungry: put food in front of him, and he would eat it until you took it away again. Yes, being on this drug had definitely been more like being a cow than a zombie. What mattered was that he wasn't himself, and maybe the Professor was right when he said that Joel had never wanted to die in the first place. He just wanted to kill this shut-in mental patient, the waste of skin who trundled around the attic trying to decide if he was a zombie or a cow, who had seen the best psychologists in the business and was still irrationally miserable.

But of course, if he killed that person, then what was left? Nothing, Joel suspected was the answer -- but he was used to being nothing. It came to him naturally.

He fell heavily into a blank, fur-lined sleep, his clothes still on. There were no dreams and no sensations but that of being wrapped in cloth -- felt, perhaps, or baize, something stiff and warm.

* * *

Charles at the Château Laurier was just minutes away from Notre Dame, so after a leisurely dinner alone in the hotel dining room, he called an entirely unnecessary taxi to bring him to the massive silver basilica on Sussex Drive.

Notre Dame had two sharp, aggressive-looking towers, and a wooden Madonna between them, her yellowish colour clashing a bit with the grey stone and silvery steeples. Charles bypassed the high stone steps for a side door, which he hoped would be open. He had become adept at finding these hidden accessibility doors, coming in from the side or the back like a thief. It killed the spontaneity to call ahead and ask to have these doors opened for him, so sometimes he would try a locked door and then leave that church or that business, and not return. Charles liked spontaneity.

Inside, the church was a riot of carvings, statues, and windows, with gaudy columns that looked like a sort of candy Charles remembered from his childhood, something they didn't make anymore. Every surface was fluted or rosetted or arabesqued. It was too much, an oppressive build-up of art. Even the ceiling was painted dark blue and spangled with thousands of golden stars. Charles had been raised in a Free Methodist church where a few square panes of coloured glass in the windows were hailed as princely decoration, and possibly suspect: something inside him still looked at churches like Notre Dame and wondered, like Judas, what this all was for, why the money was not spent on the poor.

Lillian McCree was seated near the front of the church, as if this were a funeral, and she waved him over. She was dressed in conservative grey wool, her long hair pulled back. She resembled her son, the same reddish hair (hers grey-streaked now) and the same fragile, freckled skin. He thought she must have been something of a bohemian in her youth, because she had the look of an older hippie gone straight -- the chunky amber necklace, the hair that she hadn't cut short, a defiant lack of makeup. 

Charles had to sit in the aisle, sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb, which was one reason (not the main one) for his rare attendance of religious services. Joel was notably absent too, and Charles asked about him.

"He's...unavailable," Mrs. McCree said, with a small glance at the other people gathering in the church behind them. "He went out on me this afternoon."

"He's under an incredible strain."

"Well, we all are. I hate to put pressure on him, but...I _wish_ he would make more of an effort."

Charles sensed sticky-flypaper resentment, for which it was hard to blame her.

 

After Mass, Lillian talked him into a drink. They went to the house of the famous Aunt Carmel, where a number of relatives were gathered for the same purpose. The old house in the downtown neighbourhood known as the Glebe was narrow and tight, but everyone in the kitchen exclaimed with delight to see him, the American doctor who had taken the trouble to fly all the way to Ottawa for the sake of their young cousin.

"What will you have, Doctor?" asked Aunt Carmel, who didn't seem nearly as terrifying as Joel had made her sound. She was old and stooped, and wore black like Queen Victoria, but her white hair was still thick, swept back in a bun. Her accent, which Charles at first took to be Irish, was actually from Newfoundland.

"Is there any of the nice rye left?" Lillian asked.

"The doctor gets it, if there is."

"I know, that's why I asked. It's excellent, Charles, really. Have the rye."

Charles accepted a glass of the nice rye, which was indeed good, smooth and golden. Rye was usually too bland for his taste (he preferred Scotch), but this had a pleasant smoky undertone, and something else that you almost wouldn't notice, something he couldn't place. Like a secret. He sat at the kitchen table with these other people, strangers from another country, and let the conversation unwind around him while sipping at that warming golden rye, trying to guess what that elusive flavour was. Before he knew it, almost two hours had gone by.

He learned some interesting contextual details of Joel's family. The McCrees were from Montreal, anglophone Quebeckers of Irish descent, lawyers and doctors who were modestly wealthy. Lillian's side, the O'Briens, were Newfoundlanders who had come to central Canada in search of jobs. A significant difference of class and regional culture. The O'Briens had grown up with coal stoves and backyard chicken coops, and had pulled themselves out of poverty with the help of the Church: three of Lillian's brothers had joined the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the same religious order that Dr. Visineau belonged to. And Lillian had fallen in love with Jim McCree when she was 35, long after she'd expected to fall suddenly in love. 

"I just can't help wondering where he is," Lillian said, swirling her ice cubes around. "The police tell me they probably have a hideout close by, maybe just outside Hull, maybe up in the Gatineau hills somewhere. He's probably less than an hour away. I feel so helpless."

She certainly did. Alcohol lowered people's inhibitions, and Charles always found that people became much louder mentally when they were drinking. When he was young, he had avoided parties and pubs for that very reason, and when he did go he stayed sober. Charles hated to lose control, and it happened very rarely. But now he could feel Mrs. McCree's worry tugging at his mental sleeve, and this very worthy rye was softening up his shields until they were fine and porous, letting in streams of other thought.

"We are not helpless," he said. "We can choose our reactions, even if we can't affect events themselves."

"But we can't. I can't choose not to feel this way, I mean. This is my husband. How can you love someone if you don't worry about them?"

One of the cousins, who Charles thought was named Simon, said, "Well, like the man says, 'Who can by worrying add one day to his life?'"

"Nobody likes hearing that one. It's pretty hard to swallow," said another relative, one of the priests. 

"What, you figured out how to worry your way to immortality?"

"No, it's _literally_ true, but nobody likes to hear that it's pointless to worry," said the priest. "People want to worry. It's human nature."

"Many people find that spirituality helps with these feelings of powerlessness," said Charles, trying to be agreeable on the subject.

Lillian laughed, although the sound of it wasn't very happy. "Oh God, I feel even more helpless when I come out of church. It's one thing to turn it over to the police or the school board, but when things are so desperate that _God's_ the only one who can change them, then you have problems. That's not comforting at all, I don't know why people always say that. But we've been in that position often enough over the years."

She paused. "You get so tired, you know. Not being able to do anything, it'll wear you right out. What's wrong with him, Charles? Do you have an answer?"

He took a second to realise she was talking about Joel now, not her husband. "You were most likely told that depression is common in children who suffer meningitis, weren't you? It could be nothing more than that."

"No," she said quietly. "Even before he got sick. He would come home from school and not say a word to us. His weight was the problem, we think. Well, not the weight, but the other kids were giving him grief for it. We got a little crazy, trying to fix the weight problem because we knew we couldn't fix the other kids. I wish we'd done it differently. But I was hoping that he would have said something about it all to you."

"The weight was part of it, yes," said Charles, remembering those acid memories that lived in the dark weeds of the green lake, where the fierce pike hunted. "I know he hates to think that he's making you worry."

"But what else can I do? I can't even hug him, my own baby. God, listen to me. I'm getting maudlin." She put her glass down. "I ought to get home, anyway. It was lovely to spend some time with you, Charles."

They left in separate taxis, going in the same direction.

* * *

Joel had been dreaming about living underwater, when suddenly his mother was in his room shaking him awake again. The sleep climbed off him but waited at his bedside; it was that sort of sleep. You couldn't kill it just by getting up. No, it wasn't at his side, it was still in his body, weighing the limbs down. God, Zyprexa. He never thought of this part when he took the pills, how hard it was to come back to the surface. His eyes were full of sand, as if he had been buried under the ocean floor. "What?"

"Phone. I called you and called you, but you didn't wake up." His mother handed him the cordless phone, whose buttons were glowing green in the dark room. She turned on the lamp by his bed, and the walls turned gold.

Joel held the phone to his ear, not entirely certain that he remembered how to use such an object. The clock face read eleven, but he felt as if he'd been asleep for thousands of years. And unlike Rip Van Winkle, while he slept time had gone backwards, so that he was not in the future but the distant past, sometime when this whole countryside was tropical and wild. Long ago the Arctic was as warm as the equator.

He remembered what you said on telephones. "Hello?"

"Joel. You're all right."

That seemed to be what everyone always said to him, asking it as a question or stating it as a fact, trying to reassure themselves. Joel didn't recognise the voice. "Who's this?"

A moment's pause. "It's your father, Joel."

"Oh my God. Shit. _Shit._ I'm sorry, Dad, I'm sorry." The sleep had retreated further now. "You sound funny on this phone, and I'm drugged up and -- and I just got up, that's all. I'm so sorry. You're okay?"

"For now." There were some murmurs in the background. "They let me call because they wanted me to relay some messages to the police. Your mother took them down. She said you were home so I wanted to tell you how much I love you."

"Oh Jesus, Dad." They were going to kill him, definitely, probably as soon as he hung up the phone. Joel felt like throwing up. "I mean, I love you too. But Jesus Christ, Dad..."

Why couldn't he think of anything better to say than that, to his father who would probably be dead within half an hour? _Angels and ministers of grace defend us..._ Of course he had to pick tonight to drug himself to leaden stupidity, on a night when he needed to be clear. What if his father was trying to give clues or something? _You watch way too many movies, you moron._

"Now, don't panic, Joel. They haven't shown me their faces yet. Why would they bother with hiding if they were going to kill me?" His father sounded ludicrously calm. "I explained this to your mother. They aren't murderers. They're ordinary people who believe they're doing what they have to do to protect Canada's interests."

That was certainly for the benefit of those murmuring voices in the background, so Joel did not argue. "Oh, Dad."

"I did the nine first Fridays, you know. That means I won't go without a chance for Last Rites. So they won't just shoot me."

"That's not what it means, Dad." Joel's voice had broken.

His father dropped the jocular tone. "Yes, it does. A promise is a promise. Are you doing well with Dr. Xavier?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm doing a lot better."

"That's good. Still studying, I hope."

Joel wiped his nose on the back of his hand. "Yeah, I am."

"Okay. Keep it up then. I think they want the phone back now--" There was a click, and the line went dead.

"Hello?"

Silence.


	8. Blackburn Hamlet

_Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects._  
—Lester B. Pearson

Inspector Jérôme Brazeau had the look of someone terminally unimpressed, with a face whose features seemed too big for it. He had a long Roman nose and thick dark eyebrows that nearly met in the middle, and he was probably well-cut and muscular in his youth -- now he was just big and meaty, in late middle age.

He set up at the kitchen table, slamming his briefcase down as if he blamed the McCrees for dragging him out to work at this hour, and spent about eighty minutes talking to Joel's mother. His English was perfect, accentless, sharp and quick as a flicked rubber band. He kept a notebook open in front of him, and the notes he took were copious but illegible, ornamented occasionally with bored doodles of food items: pies, loaves of bread, carrots, heads of lettuce.

Joel observed this, invisible, from over the inspector's shoulder, although he mostly hung in the back corner of the kitchen. He didn't care much if he fell over into the whiteness, not tonight, and paradoxically that seemed to make it much easier to control his state. When Brazeau dotted a sentence with a rather violent period and turned a page, saying, "All right, let's have the son in here," Joel was able to drift back to his room and reappear there in time to answer his mother's call.

Brazeau did not get up when Joel entered the room (again), but he extended one big hand -- one of those subtle handshakes with no perceptible movement that the RCMP favoured. He introduced himself, and said, "I'm leading the investigation on your father's kidnapping. Can we take the action outside, please?" This he addressed to the other two officers still talking to Joel's mother. "Thank you."

When they were alone in the kitchen, the inspector rubbed his forehead and uncapped his pen again. "All right, you spoke to the Senator after your mother. She woke you up to receive the call. What did he have to say to you?"

Joel repeated the conversation from memory; his father's words were clear enough in his mind, but he was vague on what exactly he had babbled into the phone. Brazeau wrote it all down, though, and flipped back through his notebook to read the earlier stuff again.

He tapped his pen on the desk for awhile, then looked up at Joel, studying him carefully. "You're the mutant, then?"

"Yeah." Joel hated that word, hated the '50s sci-fi sound of it.

"Show me," said Brazeau, leaning forward a bit.

Joel felt a moment of shocked outrage, as if he had been asked to strip and display his genitals, but he couldn't come up with a rational reason to refuse. He hid his annoyance and descended slowly into the Aphanes. The whiteness was underneath him, a yawning vastness, but he could stay above it if he was careful. When he had entirely disappeared, Brazeau stretched out his hand across the table corner and moved his fingers experimentally through the empty air. Joel reappeared as soon as he took away his hand.

"Your mother said it wasn't well-controlled."

"It wasn't. I've been getting better." He wasn't sure why that was happening, but it was. Dr. Xavier had taught him some exercises, almost as an afterthought, just as Father Gilles had tried to do. They were actually working, for the moment. Joel's policy was not to trust the inner workings of his head, even if he seemed to be making progress.

Brazeau made a note. "You can't be touched -- can you walk through things? Walls, closed doors?"

"Uh-huh."

"Huh. Your mum says you have some mental problems."

"I guess."

"Fill me in, please."

Joel was sceptical. "You know what I have, if you talked to my mom."

"You really are a politician's son. No, I don't know what you have."

"You know I was bad enough to be at St. Rita's."

"But you're not anymore, are you? I need specifics here, okay? I'm not judging you for anything, because I honestly don't care, personally. It's for my notes. Let's just hear the diagnoses."

"Major depression, generalised anxiety, and social anxiety," Joel said. He would have put up more of a fuss, if he hadn't had some recollection that the material was already public. His father had made an impassioned speech on bullying and emotional disturbances in children, a couple of years ago, and might well have named names in the debate afterwards, if not in the speech itself. Joel therefore had the lingering feeling of having been exposed, although he didn't know if he actually had been or not.

"No psychosis there?"

"No." Father Gilles had refrained from listing the Affair of the Shared Room as a psychotic episode, preferring to describe it as an "uncharacteristic bout of extreme paranoia, reality testing intact", and Joel was grateful for that.

Brazeau wrote all this down, and then said, "Too young for a security clearance, I guess."

"Yeah."

"You could get one next year, though," the inspector said, and lowered his voice to a murmur. "Listen, this doesn't go further than your own pair of ears, but you could have an interesting career ahead of you. What you can do, it's useful. People will start making offers, when you're old enough. Either CSIS or us at the RCMP -- it's a good opportunity."

"I don't think I'm really the type," said Joel. It was almost funny, although he knew better than to laugh.

"No?" Brazeau made a _who knows?_ gesture. "What are you hoping to do? University?"

"Yeah, probably." No probably about it -- university or death, in his family.

"For what?"

Joel shrugged. "History," he said, after deciding that Brazeau wasn't just going to accept a shrug for an answer. "Or, I dunno, maybe law school eventually."

"The Invisible Lawyer, huh? I don't know. If you weren't so rich, you'd get offers to pay for school, lodgings, whatever you needed. What do you think would change your mind?"

Joel was a little uneasy. How badly _did_ the RCMP want mutants?

Brazeau shrugged, like he thought Joel was just playing hardball. "Well, think about it. This is all in the maybe phase right now, but one of these days it'll be for real. The RCMP is gonna be interested. We could use a couple of people like you. I'll give you a card. You'll be eighteen soon, eh?"

Joel nodded silently.

"Huh. Back to business, then, I guess." The inspector flipped back a few pages again, and said, "Do you have any ideas about who might have been involved in this? These guys got into the East Block, they knew where your dad would be -- what do you think? How did they know that?"

"I don't know."

Brazeau just waited, doodling pictures of wheat sheaves and milk cartons.

"Amanda Kilborne?" Joel said at last, hesitantly. "That's my dad's assistant."

"What gives you a bad feeling about her?"

"She had all the information on my dad's schedule. And she doesn't like mutants."

"You don't think so? Why's she working here, then?"

"It's a job. We got her boyfriend a spot too, working for the Heritage Minister." Amanda and her boyfriend weren't rich enough to quit over anti-mutant politics. Not many people were.

"Who's the boyfriend?"

"Henri-Michel Marchand. He works for Mike Lalonde, who has his office in the East Block."

"Okay." Brazeau sounded bored. "Why didn't you guys fire her?"

"My parents think I'm imagining it. That she hates mutants."

"Is that..." The inspector seemed to look for a diplomatic way of phrasing it, and failed. "Is that likely?"

Joel didn't have any proof, of course. He _was_ paranoid sometimes, and it was true that he usually assumed people didn't like him before they had even met. And yet he thought that Amanda was different from these unspoken and probably imaginary enmities. Even though it was muted by necessity, her hatred had a shockingly real quality, unlike the ambiguous disdain he saw in other people. But all he could say was, "She doesn't like _me._ "

Brazeau chuckled. "Yeah, well, that could mean a lot of things." He gathered up his notebook and levered himself up from the table. "I'm gonna go check on those clowns upstairs. Think about the Force, though, seriously. You don't want to end up sending your cereal box tops to the MI6 like the guys at CSIS, do you? Gross."

* * *

Charles did not sleep well, even in the silken comfort of his Château Laurier suite, and the sounds of construction outside woke him early. Joel called soon afterwards to clumsily ask him if he would go with them to Marin Leavitt's funeral. Charles agreed, hoping to give some moral support -- he didn't know anymore what else he could be doing up here.

Ottawa was a tactical error, he thought: he wouldn't be here long enough to do any good, and if the crisis dragged on too long then Joel would stall for time, try to avoid coming back to New York to continue with therapy. Now, at a moment when they were so close to forming an alliance and perhaps reaching a breakthrough, all their progress could fade away.

In the taxi on his way up to Rockcliffe Park, Charles heard about the Senator's phone call from the radio news. The CFH were apparently demanding changes to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to have mutants specifically excluded from its protections, or to have "normal" humans named as a protected group. They apparently weren't sure which was better. Charles wondered if they had thought of asking the expert human rights lawyer they were holding captive.

"That's rather an extreme thing to demand, isn't it?" Charles asked the taxi driver.

"No kidding, eh," the man said. "Can they even change that? Don't they have to get all the provinces to agree or something? Or is that the Constitution? Maybe they're the same thing. Ah, I don't know. But it doesn't matter, cause they're a bunch of maniacs and they're not going to get their way. I just feel bad that so many people had to get hurt. And it's not looking good for the Senator, eh, you hear about that?"

"Hmm," said Charles, in his favourite non-committal tone.

"I saw his wife in the paper, too. Sad business, sad. You know, I remember when he first started catching heat about the mutant stuff, a few years ago. But like that was just the Tories trying to screw the Liberals, I didn't think nothing of it. Which is -- I don't know if you're a Tory or not --"

"I'm an American, actually."

"Oh! Well, so you know all about it, right? You know this stuff gets blown out of proportion. I hear the fuss in the States all the time about dangerous mutants. All they gotta do is put the mutants who commit crimes in jail, right? And if they don't hurt anybody then you leave 'em alone. Seems simple enough to me. Some people -- get the people in this city talking on politics, I swear to God -- they say it's too hard for cops to arrest mutants, because mutants have an unfair advantage. But you know what, lots of people aren't even mutants and they can do weird shit. Like my cousin can kick down a brick wall with his feet. He did it once. And he got arrested just fine."

Charles did not know what to say to that, so he fell back on, "Ah."

"See, all these people trying to change things are just going to wreck it all. We don't need all these revolutions, or referendums, or to get rid of the Queen, or any of that. They should just settle down. It's not such a bad world to live in as it is."

* * *

"One hesitates to use the word 'martyr'," said the priest, "because it has been so abused over the centuries. From September 11th to Brébeuf and his brethren, people have given up their lives for things that we find questionable: the deaths of so-called infidels, the assimilation of Natives. But Marin Leavitt -- I say this with great confidence -- like the Honourable Dean Henstock, like the two Mounties who died on Saturday -- Marin Leavitt was a martyr. He died because he had worked, as Commissioner for Human Rights, for the marginalised and the weak, those unwanted by society. That includes mutants. Marin died, was murdered in his prime, because a group of terrorists found this unacceptable. In Greek, the word 'martyr' originally meant a witness. Marin Leavitt was truly a witness for the cause of human dignity."

People often called Charles a starry-eyed idealist, but even he was uncomfortable with this eulogy. It was true enough that the man had died because of his beliefs, but it was equally true that he hadn't exactly faced down a firing squad or a tank, or gone to the stake without recanting. He'd been blown up while getting his Saturday newspaper. To call that martyrdom seemed to give the crime itself a sort of dignity, as if it had been Marin's choice to die. As if he had accepted it. Would he perhaps have repudiated his beliefs had he been held at gunpoint? Shouldn't a martyr have to make that decision, at some point? Shouldn't anyone get the chance to recant?

It was a closed coffin. It had been closed even at the wake, apparently, because of the injuries the bomb had caused to his face and neck. "Blew his face right off," said one elderly gentleman, after the Mass was over.

They were standing around in the vestibule of Good Shepherd, a sleek, modern church in the East End suburb of Blackburn Hamlet. Fully accessible, though. Half-frozen date squares and Nanaimo bars had been provided. The church stood at the edge of town, and all that could be seen through the windows were highway and deep woods.

Joel wore a dark suit and what looked like a school tie, a welcome change from his usual frayed black sweaters. He stood by his mother for a few minutes, looking antsy, and finally excused himself and escaped to the parking lot. Charles followed.

"I haven't had much chance to speak with you, since the airport yesterday," Charles said. "Are you glad to have heard from your father?"

"Well, he's probably dead by now," said Joel, in a tone that sounded almost casual. Charles knew better, having access to his thoughts: it was late November there inside his head, dry leaves and twigs, the bears in hibernation. Joel would not expend energy on hope, not now.

But he asked, "What makes you think that?"

"Just -- they let him call, and Sherbrooke made that speech saying he wouldn't negotiate, and they made that crazy demand for Charter protection...it seems like they were all set to kill him, and to make it seem like less than murder, they asked for something. Something they knew they wouldn't get."

Charles could not deny that it was very much possible that the Senator was already dead, so he did not try. "How do you feel about that? About potentially losing your father?"

"I wish they would get it over with, one way or the other."

It wasn't cold, the air soft-edged and trembling on the freezing point. He understood why Joel had wanted to come outside for a moment; it was just cold enough to be bracing and fresh, something cleansing. The snow-filled woods filled the horizon. For a moment, Charles could almost imagine that they were in the distant past, when only loggers came this way. Blind wilderness, without words.

"Did your father say he loved you?"

Joel was looking across at the trees too. He pulled his mind back, a spider retreating into a crevice. "Yup."

"Do you believe that?"

"Yeah, I do. He loved me. I don't deny that."

"Ah, you don't deny it. But do you accept it?" 

Joel shrugged. 

Charles pressed further. "It seems to me that at your core you don't accept that you can truly be loved. Does that sound right to you?"

"Yeah, well, no kidding. What is there to love, you know?" Joel glanced back at the church. "If I had the time -- we can't really get into stuff --"

"We have the time," said Charles. "Trust me."

"When I was young..." Joel hesitated, and then started again. "Look, the thing is there are two true stories. I _was_ loved, I was loved all my life, that's absolutely true. Absolutely. But it's also true that everyone hated me, laughed at me, all of that. Everyone at school. At home things were fine. There was the outer shell, that my parents loved, that got its picture taken every fall in the good clothes, and there was the inner thing that everyone else seemed to see when they looked at me."

Joel stood still for a few moments, looking out at the woods at the edge of the parking lot. He adjusted his tie, unconsciously. "Does that make sense? My parents love me, they love the shell. For some reason, I don't know, they just can't see the thing on the inside. When I was a kid, I couldn't see it in myself either. Only other people saw it. I learned how to spot it, though. The inside thing is -- not even a monster. It's just need, you know? Need and something that just presses people's hate-buttons, something that makes people turn their backs. It's a tumour of the personality. If I go on living it'll just grow and grow and there won't be anything of me left, just it."

He said no more, and Charles knew that an answer could fit in here, a wise answer. And yes, he could have fashioned one, mirroring back what the boy had said in psychological terms. It wasn't an uncommon feeling, to believe in a secret flaw in the self that rendered one damaged goods. Victims of sexual abuse had it, and other children who had been subjected to small traumas, repeated, overlooked: they produced this pathology.

But Charles did not want to give the therapist's answer. He said nothing.

"That was why I did it, why I tried to kill myself. Not so much the first time -- at Mr. Leavitt's house. But if I could I'd have gone way up north, up to some place where the climate could kill me, where no one could follow, and I would've done it there. That's where this thing belongs, it belongs far away from people. The reservoir wasn't far enough. But I have to think of my parents, because they lived this long to have a son and they want what they paid for. No, all right, you're right. That isn't true. I don't know why I said that. But they want me to get better. That's all they want, they're the only people who care about me, and I can't do it for them."

Joel sank down to sit on the edge of a salt-box, rubbing the back of his neck. He then looked up at Charles and said, "Do you get what I'm saying? Do you believe me?"

"I believe you," said Charles. "But I want you to know that your parents are not the only ones who care about you. I care about you very much."

"No, you don't. You care about _succeeding_ with me, and that's about it. Like, I don't blame you? But don't try to kid yourself, or me." The same false casual tone as before, trying to hold back some powerful emotion. Charles could make out the fringes of it, but no more. "Let's be real. You don't know me well enough to care about me."

"I know quite a bit about you, Joel."

Silence.

"I know that you love learning, and you love art and literature. You have a strong sense of duty, a somewhat overdeveloped conscience. You want people to approve of you. You..." Charles began to feel the truth of what Joel had said. He didn't know, not really, and his caring was impersonal. He could have reached into the boy's mind and simply created trust, created a pleasant hormonal feeling of closeness, and perhaps he could have even justified it to himself -- _you're saving a life, it's no different from medicating a patient until he can respond to therapy._ He probably could have asked and got Joel's consent to it, too. But it wouldn't have eased his own sense of failure.

"You're trying not to hurt my feelings," Joel said.

"Yes, a bit."

"This is what I mean when I say the tumour is taking me over. By the end there'll be nothing at all to know about me. I'll turn into pages from the DSM. And when that happens I'm going to stop fucking around and really do it. I'll take a train up to Kenora, or somewhere, get out in the woods, and blow my head off with a shotgun."

"So now I know not to let you go up north for a hunting trip," Charles said, attempting a light tone and failing.

"Oh, you won't be in the picture by then. You're going to give up, just like Father Gilles did."

And now Charles could feel that powerful emotion that had been trembling behind the boy's shields. It sang like a plucked string, and smelled sharp as mustard, and a long shiver went over Charles's nerves as he probed it. To name and label it would be to reduce it to something simple, something a doctor could read in a medical journal and nod over sagely and safely. But Charles could feel, all at once, the weight of those weeks in the attic, of the years in hospitals and care centres, of all the conversations his parents had had across his bed while they thought he was asleep, and that weight was too immense to dismiss. It was something, in fact, that he understood. _Ay, madam, it is common._

* * *

"Charles!" exclaimed Visineau. "You've done it."

"I haven't done anything."

They were in Visineau's cluttered, windowless office at the north end of St. Rita's. The remains of his lunch were still sitting out on the desk, and the statue of St. Joseph on top of the file cabinet was up to his waist in paper. The priest himself was eating a little tub of yogurt and swivelling back and forth in his chair, a gesture that was making Charles think of Senator McCree. "You have the grail, though, the therapeutic alliance. The bird came and sat on your finger. I'm amazed."

"No. No. It's not well-developed enough yet to say that. He felt like talking, that's all. Who was it who said, 'It's not so much that my dog obeyed me, but sometimes he agreed with me'?"

"I have no idea. Farley Mowat?"

"That can't be it." Charles didn't recognise the name. "C.S. Lewis, maybe? It doesn't matter, you take my meaning. He felt like talking, which is all very well, but I still haven't cracked him open." Charles thought better of that last phrase and said, "If you will excuse the violent imagery."

"Anyone who's treated that patient will forgive you some violent imagery, Doctor." Visineau rocked backward in his chair. He had wide cheekbones and a long upper lip, the sort of mingling of the Gallic and the Native American features that Charles had noticed often in Quebec faces. "No, believe me, if he spoke to you about blowing his head off somewhere north of Kenora, then you have won his trust. With me he always acted as though it was somehow impolite to tell your psychiatrist that you're suicidal."

"He wanted you to think better of him."

"Joel's very big on approval from authority figures. Which has caused him a lot of pain, I think, but right now it seems to be keeping him alive," said Visineau. He was quiet for a moment, then said, "Well. What are you planning to do next?"

"Right now I can only offer support. It's not the time to challenge him with anything very difficult."

Neither of them said anything about the potential death of Jim McCree. No need to borrow trouble.

Visineau asked casually, "Have you ever dealt with anything like this before, Charles? An abduction of a patient's loved one, I mean?"

"Occasionally," said Charles.

The priest caught his eye and held it for a few moments, appraising, then set to wrapping up his lunch noisily in the wax paper. "I've been working in the capital a long time, and I know people who know people. I hear things. Of course, I know that you are associated with the X-Men in New York. I've never heard anyone say they have proof you're a mutant yourself. But if one wants the X-Men, one contacts Charles Xavier. That's all they know."

Charles did not answer that; better to wait and see. Visineau went on, "Yes, I snooped. Not very Christ-like of me. You'll understand that I'm not too fond of vigilantes right now, but...I am at your disposal, if you choose to tell me anything. I'm a priest, I can keep a secret."

Charles felt the sting of that _vigilantes_ , but he could hardly correct him; the X-Men operated with the blessing of certain federal agencies, yes, but he could not reveal that, even with Visineau's guarantees of secrecy. Charles forced himself not to pry deeply into the priest's mind, but he could sense worry, attached to nothing in particular but floating on the surface like algae. "I appreciate that, coming from you."

"And you are not getting involved?"

"How would it look, Gilles?" Charles asked gently. "A group of mutants from another country interfering in the investigation of a crime which was by humans and against humans. If we didn't succeed we'd be crucified."

Visineau raised his eyebrows at the "we", but said nothing about that. "So the problem is what, you're not sure you could do it?"

"I'm not one hundred per cent confident that they wouldn't make some hideous blunder, no." Charles felt two-faced, but it was the truth. Hostage situations were nasty, and if it came to a violent confrontation between the X-Men and the CFH, with the Senator caught in the middle, the diplomatic aftermath could cost the X-Men much of their federal support. "The stakes are too high in this case to allow them that margin of error."

Visineau nodded silently.

Charles, feeling guilty, added, "If we were in the States, I wouldn't hesitate. Or if it were a situation in which mutants were directly involved, rather than indirectly. But here...without the permission of the RCMP or some other authority, no, the X-Men will not intervene."

Visineau was quiet for a few moments, still swivelling back and forth in the chair. Then he said, "Suppose you did get that permission?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blackburn Hamlet is the name of an Ottawa suburb, and also a Shakespeare joke.


	9. The Paper Birds

_Justice is to me a warm spirit, born of tolerance and wisdom,_  
_present everywhere, ready to serve the highest purposes_  
_of rational man. To seek to create the just society must be_  
_amongst the highest of these human purposes._  
—Pierre Elliott Trudeau

The Right Honourable Thomas Sherbrooke came by Dr. Xavier's suite in the Château Laurier the next evening, as soon as he could decently get away from his dinner obligation. Joel and his mother were there -- Joel was doing well, after excusing himself to vomit in the bathroom, running the water to cover the sound. _Yeah, just super._ But it wasn't that bad, he told himself. All he had to do was be there, and look pathetic as the mutant scion of the family, speaking only when spoken to. That was tolerable. He could do it.

It was another snowy night. Sherbrooke had taken his shoes off at the door and draped his coat over the back of a chair to dry, loosened tie, his shirtsleeves rolled up to expose his freckled forearms. A contrived casualness. There was always something automaton-like in his manner -- Joel could imagine him saying the exact same things to an empty room, shaking hands with nothing. There were military men who were the same way, and teachers: people who had been so honed and shaped by their jobs that they were a mass of pre-conditioned responses, until you pierced them through with something unexpected.

Or, as Joel had discovered, if you said nothing to them, if you didn't know the responses to their ritual statements, they would drop the mask and react with irritation, disgust, even fear. That wouldn't happen tonight, though. So long as there was someone else to talk to, these armoured professionals could ignore the person sitting silently. All would be well.

Sherbrooke was now leaning forward in the loveseat, in an attitude of intrigued receptivity, listening to the Professor's explanation of the X-Men.

"We are," said Dr. Xavier, "a small group of men and women -- there are, at the moment, only five of us -- who believe that peace between humans and mutants is possible. Not only possible, but a true necessity. The domination of one by the other can only end in the destruction of both. Oppression always damages the oppressor too. To that end, we fight to protect both mutants endangered by prejudice and humans put in jeopardy by mutants. This is a different spin on the usual, I admit: humans have been put in danger by anti-mutant prejudice."

"You could be described as a private army or militia, could you not?" the Prime Minister said.

"That seems a little strong for a group of five people, Mr. Sherbrooke."

"But you don't operate under anyone's jurisdiction down south, and your funding is exclusively private -- from what I hear."

"You've done your homework on us." The Professor smiled, the cool smile that said he was slowly running low on patience. Joel was familiar with that expression.

Sherbrooke didn't dignify that with an answer, and Joel privately agreed.

Dr. Xavier went on, "Our funding is private, so that we are not dependant on the goodwill of the government. But for the moment, we do have that goodwill. Mutant-human relations are tense in the United States, as they are beginning to be in Canada as well. Tense but not unworkable."

"I understand, Doctor, but I want to know who will be accountable if something goes wrong."

"I will be," said the Professor.

"Really?" Sherbrooke was unmoved. "You'll be sued, or charged with whatever criminal blunders your X-Men may commit? You'll go to a Canadian prison over them without crying to Washington and making our lives difficult?"

"I will." No hesitation, and Joel suddenly realised that the Professor had no intention of allowing any such thing to happen. Minds would be wiped before Xavier ever appeared before a judge.

Either that, or he was just supremely confident that the X-Men would make no mistakes. Joel didn't think the Professor was that stupid.

Sherbrooke seemed to be thinking the same thing. "I believe I'd like that in writing," he said.

"Draft something up with a lawyer," said Dr. Xavier carelessly. "I'll sign as soon as it's ready."

It was here that Joel had to excuse himself. In the creamy-porcelain suite bathroom, he sank down to sit on the cool tiled floor, feeling feverish and sick. Part of that was accumulated stress, he knew. The other part was lobster bisque -- why the fuck had he ordered lobster bisque? It was making him sicker just thinking of how that was going to look in the toilet. 

At one time, he would have collapsed in a fiesta of hypochondria and concluded that the meningitis was back, or that he was dying of something else, but now it seemed easier to accept the more sensible conclusion. _You're just neurotic and scared. That makes sense. That's okay._ But he knew that the Prime Minister would not remember to draft anything up with a lawyer, would not even remember that he had considered it, and Joel could do nothing about that.

After the lobster bisque made its inglorious exit into the toilet, Joel washed his mouth out in the sink and took a long look at his face in the mirror. If he emerged from the bathroom looking even worse than usual, they would notice. As he was turning to leave, he caught a glimpse of his profile: his father's, he realised. It was an odd feeling; no one had ever remarked on a resemblance before. Everyone always said _you look just like the O'Briens._ But the long nose with the bump in the bridge was his father's, and the strong chin. Just by noticing it, he felt almost as if he had become somebody else.

Outside in the sitting room, Sherbrooke was saying, "If you can keep it extremely low-profile -- _extremely_ \-- then yes, okay, we can do it."

"We are used to working discreetly," Dr. Xavier said with a little smile.

"The officers on the ground will be the ones who make the final decision, okay? If they don't want to use you, they don't have to."

"Concerning whether or not they go at all, of course. But if they do actually work together, I would like to be able to give my field leaders a bit more say than that."

The Prime Minister shrugged, and said in his meandering way, "Well, we'll talk to Brazeau about that, you know, since it's his case. Whatever he does or doesn't want to do, I don't know, but we want everyone on the ground to be effective. I'm only saying that we don't want tension between your team and the Mounties. We want people working in harmony or not at all. Now, I can take this to the Solicitor-General and the Commissioner and say, 'look, we have an offer from this American team to help you out.' I'm not going to micromanage this. That's not how I do things."

The Professor gave that a few seconds, to show he wasn't completely happy, then said, "That would be acceptable."

"Good," said Sherbrooke. He glanced at Joel's mother, and said, "I think it's reasonable to let you know something else, which I don't want going to the media. It will get its own press conference, trust me, but I don't want to risk being misunderstood here."

"What is it?" asked Joel's mother.

"We're going to agree to their demand for a referendum on Charter protection for mutants."

Dead silence. Joel, strangely, was the first to speak. "No way."

"'Fraid so."

"So, so, what, you're going to put us through Charlottetown and Meech again?" Joel was stuttering in his shock. "You think you'll get all the provinces to come to some sort of _consensus_ on mutants?"

"You weren't even alive for Charlottetown and Meech, me son," Sherbrooke said heartily. "We'll start the process, yes. Most likely no one will agree and we won't have to have the referendum at all, so nothing will change. If it does -- well, we need something in the Charter to cover mutants."

"That wasn't what the CFH demanded, anyway. They wanted us to be specifically _un_ covered."

"Well, what they demanded wasn't possible, so I'm afraid they're going to be misunderstood." Sherbrooke was smiling broadly, that smile Joel had seen so often on politicians who were sure they'd just outfoxed somebody.

"Sure, the economy's already doing so great, why not add a Constitutional crisis?" Joel said. The whole thing was suddenly unreal: he was not sitting in the Château Laurier being rude to the Prime Minister about the economy, surely not. "I'm sorry, sir, that was out of line. But -- you just announced that you wouldn't negotiate."

"We promised that we wouldn't negotiate with the CFH, yes. But we do need to negotiate with the Canadian people, and I've been hearing complaints about how civil rights for mutants are being handled. 'Judicial activism'--" he made quotation marks with his fingers -- "is not popular, and it looks like we're forcing something on people undemocratically. Doing it in Parliament isn't working, because any laws that we pass just get challenged in the courts on Charter basis, saying it goes against 'the spirit of the Charter'." Quotation marks again. "Now, as you know, the Charter says nothing specific at all about mutants, and therefore that needs to change. Mutation is something Trudeau and the boys didn't foresee."

Trudeau was probably spinning in his grave, Joel thought. "You're going to have a referendum on civil rights for a minority."

"That's the plan. Just like his dad, this one, he loves an argument," Sherbrooke said, grinning at Dr. Xavier. "But the CFH were right about one thing, and that's the need for a constitutional amendment regarding mutants. They were wrong to demand it in the way they did, but it's a topic the Canadian people need to address."

"Sir--"

"So the wheels are in motion to call a First Ministers Conference. Democracy in action, me son."

* * *

When they got back to the house, they found a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers sitting on the table. A card tucked into the flowers offered "kind thoughts in this trying time" from Shimon Eitan, an Israeli diplomat who was a friend of the family. Amanda had left a note on the table beside the gift, reading, _Mr. Eitan will call back later._ The flowers were rosy melon-coloured things, shaped like the heads of strange birds.

"Bird of paradise, such pretty flowers," his mother said, opening the wine. 

"Is that really what they're called? I thought they looked like birds." Joel was unduly pleased by guessing right, in spite of how miserable everything else was.

Joel's mother poured two small glasses of the wine. "Not too much, on your meds."

They sat at the table in the kitchen and sipped at the sweet, dark purple wine. Joel remembered Mr. Eitan, and his pretty daughter -- what had been her name? Hala, Hava, Hana...no, Hodya. A wonderful name, how had he forgotten it? It sounded Latin, almost: Hodie beata virgo Maria, he thought. Hodya had curly brown hair, olive skin, and a gap between her front teeth, which he liked for some reason.

His mother interrupted his thoughts. "I suppose it's good that you're coming out of your shell a bit, but you ought to consider people a bit more. The man may be the Prime Minister, but that doesn't mean his feelings can't be hurt."

"What?"

"You don't need to treat people like they're stupid, just because they don't see things the way you do," she clarified. "It's rude."

"I wasn't thinking. I'm sorry. I was so -- how could you not be shocked?"

For a moment, she looked like she wanted to abandon the conversation and go to bed, but then she said, "I'm not shocked because if there's one thing I've learned from years of activism, it's that the Charter doesn't matter. It has as much power as we give it. To have justice, you go to the people, rather than piling amendments onto a document that most citizens have never read."

"I don't see what chance we have of being just if we don't have just laws." An odd image came into his mind of the laws as enormous paper birds flying over head, circling like vultures, ready to dive like hawks to punish offenders. It wasn't like that, of course, and his mother had a good point, but something inside him still repeated the line from Antigone that his father had underlined: _"To value life then one must value law."_ Not for the first time, Joel wondered what the Professor had seen in his brain. He imagined all the cross-references footnoting each other and becoming hopelessly tangled in quotes and parentheses, like Mr. Casaubon in Middlemarch with his blood full of commas.

His mother sighed and went to wash out her glass. "You're too much like your father, Joel."

Joel half-wanted to ask what she meant by that, but then decided he probably wouldn't like the answer.

After she had gone upstairs, Joel washed out the purple traces from his own glass, still looking at the reflection of his own face in the dark window. As if it were the face of a stranger, someone he wanted to paint. Before turning the light out in the kitchen, he took the card from the flowers, and read it again.

* * *

The current wisdom among the RCMP was that the CFH were hiding out somewhere in the Gatineau hills north of Ottawa, but no one had any exact locations; the phone call had been made to a payphone outside Aylmer, a town west of Gatineau, on the Quebec side of the river.

Cerebro did not find things that way, though. There were only minds in Cerebro, no geography, no grids and labels. Charles had come back to New York the morning after meeting with the Canadian Prime Minister, and he was now suspended in the huge spherical abyss, no longer aware of his body, gliding through various minds on the trail of the Senator and the kidnappers.

He began with a known quantity, the memories of Joel and his mother. Charles had only met the Senator briefly, not long enough to get a good look at his mind. Going through the memories -- and how soundlessly he could do that with Cerebro, not even arousing a feather-tickle of awareness in his subjects -- he began to put together the image of the man he was looking for.

Lillian McCree's picture of her husband was clear, detailed, shaded through various ages. The first glimpse: a rangy man with clever eyes and nice cheekbones, introduced at a party -- he was working off the sting of a broken engagement a few months ago, starting to venture back into meeting people. Lawyer, some kind of Liberal party guy. He was from Montreal, the beautiful island city. "I always wanted to see Montreal properly," she told him, "but we just drove through it on our way up from down home. Carmel wanted to make good time and not stop."

"I should take you for a visit sometime," Jim had said, and as easily as that they seemed to be dating. 

Her girlfriends made fun of her for being a boho flower child dating a strait-laced politician, but she and Jim were surprisingly compatible. He didn't put up with shit from other people, and would always be the one to take back a defective piece of merchandise or send soup back in a restaurant if it was cold -- Lillian had never been able to do things like that, and she liked being with someone who wasn't afraid to take up space and be heard. It made her feel stronger too. And Jim was just good company, a good talker; even when he was going on about the British North America Act, she loved just to listen to his voice, the way it marched along with its clipped anglo-Quebec accent, like a sentry checking the city walls to make sure everyone inside was all right. Ten o'clock and all's well. "Are you having fun?" he would ask her all the time, on dates. "Are you happy?"

Joel, meanwhile, remembered that his father came to visit him at St. Rita's three times a week: Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays for lunch after Mass. He brought books, sometimes, books from his own musty library at the back of the house. "This ought to be on your bookshelf," he would say ceremoniously. Sophocles and Cicero, books on the Napoleonic Wars, books about ships and explorers. Joel had loved ships when he was twelve, and it was an interest that coincided with his father's. There was another very clear memory, the three of them in the living room cutting an immense sheet of shiny Chinese red fabric for a sail. Jim built the little green boat himself, a small rowboat that could be converted with a removable mast and rudder into a sailboat. Jim McCree loved to build things.

Out on Meech Lake, the site of the famous ruined constitutional accord, they launched the boat from the dock, Joel at first rowing it alone around the shallows.

And there -- a bottleneck of memory, a mental swerve, and suddenly Charles was seeing it from Jim's eyes.

The boy needed to get out and get more exercise, it was true, too much gone to flesh, but in the boat he was a natural, rowing as if it were an instinct. "Look at that, like he's a Newfoundlander," Lillian said, with some pride in her voice, as if knowing boats could be passed along in the genes. Jim called the boy back, and when the little green boat glided to a stop at the dock (the kid even stopped properly, reversing the oars rather than grabbing the dock like some kids would have done), he climbed in himself.

"Was that good?" the boy asked.

"Better than good," Jim said, and they launched off again...

Charles drew back from this scene, willing the man to think about his present surroundings.

The fake wood panelling in the room was depressing, it reminded him of his year staying at Newman House in university, that firetrap with the big print of Rembrandt's _The Return of the Prodigal Son_ in the living room over the worn green sofa...

_Where are you now? Tell me more._

He only had a bare mattress, no light. It was dark all the time, so he kept busy by reciting poetry when he could remember it, by praying the Rosary on his fingers, by trying to name all the kinds of birds or weeds or animals he knew, by thinking about that green boat on Meech Lake and the small grey room at St. Rita's. What a relief it was, in spite of everything, to be free of St. Rita's. The boy used to sit there on the bed under the wooden crucifix, when he was visible, and just look at his father helplessly, as if to say, _"Well, what do you want me to do about it?"_ He looked old, older than Jim, older than anyone in the world, just around the eyes. Jim had read about people who felt physical pain all the time even though doctors could find nothing wrong with them, and it shook his belief in God. Why should people feel pain for no reason? This was the same, but worse, because it was his son, _his_ , the son they had waited so long for.

Again Charles drew back.

_Where are you? Who is holding you?_

He didn't know which of them shot Dean and the two Mounties. His memory of that was shot, it was dreamlike and blurry, there was no rescuing it now. They all wore masks, but there was the burly one, the one who smoked, and the one he had recognised (although he kept that secret): his assistant's boyfriend, Henri-Michel. Even with a pillowcase over his head, Henri-Michel's walk gave him away. He was very tall, and he walked stooped over, slowly, like a large water-bird.

_Henri-Michel. Henri-Michel._

Charles cast around for it, and then felt the connection. Struck gold.

CBC was on all the time, the volume on the TV deafening so that they could hear it from anywhere in the house. They had to keep it on because Sherbrooke might announce that they were giving in, or might talk about them. There had already been lots of talk about the Senator, his biography and all that. Sometimes they would have little segments, like, "Who are the mysterious CFH?" but they never said anything interesting. "That's cause they don't know anything," said Sean. "It's good." But for fuck's sake, if they had to listen to this stuff all day, it would be nice to hear some recognition.

Maybe the CBC could fill in the time reading aloud from the communiqués, stuff Sean had written like, _"Mutation naturally causes feelings of revulsion in normal humans, and in those quislings who will collaborate with impurities and the degeneration of a race, we can only conclude that the natural instincts are disordered."_ Sean thought he was fucking smart. Even Henri-Michel was getting sick of hearing that stuff now. They all agreed, so why keep preaching? They had other things to worry about.

_Where are you?_

It was Tim's house, and when Sean found that out he said Tim was a fucking idiot, that was how you got caught. Tim said he'd kicked his girlfriend out beforehand and everything, and Sean just rolled his eyes.

_Tim's house. Good. Where is that?_

Way up in the fucking armpit of nowhere, that's where it was. Tim didn't have a record, and no matter what Sean said, he'd never been caught before. That was the only reason why Sean had decided to stay there. It was so far out, though, that if anything happened they'd be shit for hard pressed to get away and move somewhere else. If they'd stayed in the city, they could have moved around from buddy to buddy's house -- Sean knew a lot of people sympathetic to the cause. Out here -- Christ, the nearest town was fucking Buckingham. Henri-Michel was the only one who spoke French, too, and he was scared shitless that he'd be the one to get caught. Someone in the gas station would remember him, or security in the East Block would find tape of him sneaking Sean in, or Amanda would freak out and tell somebody, or, or anything...

_Go back to the drive to the house._

Charles watched the road signs pass, the fields and trees of farming country. Then Tim's house, small and cheap, white siding and a broken kid's bicycle out front. No number on the house, but the mailbox read MARKS and the green and white sign by the driveway bore a number, 60238.

Fucking Mounties, Henri-Michel thought. They'd find him for sure, and then he was ruined, his whole life ruined, his job and his life and his family and everything, everything. In the beginning, he'd thought he had nothing to lose. Now he wasn't so sure. Maybe what he had wasn't so bad. So he was already angling to get the sentence commuted, already trying to be extra nice to McCree. Every night he made a plate of pasta, no sauce, and carried it downstairs to the basement. He would ask, "Want anything?"

Usually the old man would just shrug, or sometimes he would have a request. A glass of water, a change for the hospital bedpan they let him use, and once he asked for a reading lamp and a book.

"A book? What book?"

"Anything. Whatever you have."

He went up to ask the others, but Sean nixed the idea. "No lamp. He could use it as a weapon."

"He could use the fucking bedpan as a weapon, Sean."

"Well, Timmy doesn't read shit, so there's nothing to give him anyway."

But Henri-Michel looked around the house and found a few books. An old hockey almanac and a weathered Stephen King novel. He brought those down to the old man, who thanked him profusely. Then, as if to prove to himself that he still believed in the cause (that is, The Cause), Henri-Michel had asked, "How the hell did you live so long in the same house with a fucking mutant and not put a bullet through his head?"

McCree only looked up at him blankly, squinting in the light from the hall.


	10. The Wide Unknown Country

_The importance of the attitude we adopt to what is irrevocable_  
_cannot be emphasised too strongly. Insofar as the latter is viewed_  
_as an object, and therefore immovable, it has the power of destroying_  
_by petrifying, a power ascribed by the ancients to the face of the Gorgon._  
—Gabriel Marcel, _Creative Fidelity_

Scott tried to be a good leader, as opposed to an egomaniac. Playing well with others was important to him, and he tried to teach the kids to learn how to deal with different groups, different authority figures. You couldn’t always pick your allies. Results were what mattered, not who got the credit. _Work with what -- and who -- you’ve got. Be reasonable. Don’t play power games._

Even so, he found it tough to work with Inspector Brazeau and the other RCMP officers. He liked Brazeau okay, a brusque but straightforward guy. But it seemed like the Prime Minister had done a bit of arm-twisting, because Brazeau was cool towards the X-Men, and kept trying to assert his own authority.

Like with the jackets. Scott had his team wearing Kevlar under civilian workout clothes and cold-weather gear, since he'd been told to keep a low profile. _Ix-nay on the Ex-yay En-may._ But Brazeau had lent them RCMP windbreakers and insisted they wear them.

“Is that legal? You’re not worried we’ll be mistaken for your guys?” Scott said.

“That’s the idea,” Brazeau explained. “You’re here officially, so you’re going to look like it. And at least the CFH will be expecting Mounties. American mutant militia might be a different story. I don’t want to spook them.”

Okay, fine. Scott decided it would do no harm for the X-Men to go in under the aegis of RCMP authority, and the point about spooking the kidnappers was a good one. And they were on Brazeau’s turf, so it made sense to do things his way. They were even using real names, because the Inspector had just looked at them blankly when Scott introduced Ororo as Storm.

“Hippie parents?” he had said.

So they were Summers, Grey, and Monroe. And also Brazeau, Fortier, Kelly, Waters, Thibeault. Scott memorised those names as they drove down the snowy country roads towards the grey-blue hills in the distance. It was almost noon, blazingly sunny.

Scott leaned over to Ororo. “Do you think you can cool off this sun a bit?”

Uncertain about who to listen to, she looked to Brazeau. “Will that help you?”

“Cut the glare. Sure.” Brazeau watched her eyes go white with a sort of cautious curiosity, the kind a kid might display while his older brother lit off fireworks in a plastic Batmobile in the backyard.

The sun cooled as white clouds filled the sky, and the officer driving flipped the sunshade back up.

“Nice,” said Brazeau, apparently trying not to look impressed. “We’ll stop just up ahead. In snow on a long gravel road like this, we’d be heard well before we got close to the house. I don’t want to give them too much time to fix their hair.”

Jean was being very quiet, Scott noticed. _What’s wrong?_ he sent.

_I don't know. Nothing. Some bad juju feelings, I think._

_What do you think's gonna happen?_

_I’d tell you if I knew, babe._

But she gave him a small smile, to show that she wasn't just being evasive, wasn't trying to shut him out on purpose. He squeezed her hand.

Scott had some bad juju feelings too. It was a gloom that felt out of place: they weren’t facing Magneto, after all; they weren’t trying to save the world, or even part of it. The goal was one person, and not even a particularly important one. Not worldwide political significance, not the President’s daughter or something.

But something nasty was in the air, some cruelty and mistrust and bad luck. Scott could feel it, same as Jean. He had never liked dealing with fanatics, human-supremacists. And he had never liked being out of control.

They stopped the van just ahead of a deep bend in the road, behind some low-hanging trees. Storm gave Scott a look and deepened the clouds to fog, the kind she knew he liked best for cover.

“A bit unseasonable, isn’t it?” said Brazeau, joking. He was nervous; he felt the bad luck in the air too.

“Rain?” she suggested.

“That might be better.”

The temperature hovered just above freezing, and rain began to fall, icicles on the roof of the house dripping as they opened the back doors of the van. Brazeau gave instructions.

“The X-Men will go around the back, and we’ll stay here in the front, unless there are any objections. We'll flush them out, and if all goes well they’ll try to escape out the back and find themselves surrounded.”

“I thought we were trying not to spook them,” Scott said, realising too late that he could have phrased that in a less aggressive way.

Brazeau, though, didn’t react to the tone. “Yeah, but imagine us closing the deal in back. What are we going to do if they come out with guns blazing? All we have to work with are more guns. You guys have a telekinetic, you have energy blasts with multiple gradations, and you have a James Bond weather machine. You can disable, but all we can do is shoot.”

Scott thought about it both ways, and decided that disaster was about equally likely no matter which way they went in. The cold rain drummed on the roof. Brazeau spoke to his men in what seemed like deliberately technical language, and then ordered them into position in front of the house.

“You three take the laneway, come in from the side. There’s a small deck, and a door—”

“We saw the house plan.”

“Okay.” Brazeau hesitated a bit, then offered his hand to Scott. “ _Bonne chance,_ good luck.”

“Good luck.” Scott could not remember feeling so superstitious before a mission. He even directed one of his rare prayers to the improbable God of his childhood. _If you’re up there, keep an eye on us._

The Mounties ducked out of the van, into the broken-down green woods at the side of the road. Scott counted sixty, to give them a head start, and then led Jean and Ororo out along the road. They stayed in the ditch below the soft shoulders, trying to stay out of sight, even though Jean said, “They’re not watching the windows.”

“No?”

“They’re watching TV.”

They were within earshot of the house now, so they shut up – the element of surprise was crucial if they were to avoid a bloodbath. Scott kept his hand by his visor as they crept towards the deck and the aboveground pool, with Jean behind his right shoulder and Ororo behind his left. The door was about eight steps away, but if they made noise as they stepped on the deck it would all be over.

But they’d be all right, Scott told himself. The God (who perhaps existed, more likely than not) would keep an eye on them.

The door opened.

He was a thick, burly man in boxer shorts, with copious back hair, and he held a newspaper over his head as he ran to pick up the fat orange coils of a long extension cord that snaked out toward the car in the side line. It took Scott a few seconds to work out what he was probably doing: the cord must be for a block heater, and the guy was probably worried that freezing rain would seal the cord to the ground in a layer of ice. With no block heater, the car would be harder to start when the temperature inevitably plunged again, and that could cost them their getaway. _Guy's thinking ahead._ In that first fraction of a second, the man with the back hair didn’t seem to register that there were people in the yard, but that moment was soon over. He dropped the cord and the newspaper and darted inside with a yell. _“FUCKING COPS!”_

Scott ran after him, at a speed he usually only achieved in dreams, but somehow it wasn’t fast enough. Back Hair Man had the same damn assault rifle that had been used in the kidnapping: a fully automatic U.S. military M16, Scott judged, and how that had gotten over the border he didn’t want to guess.

Here, things dribbled to a stop. Scott and the other two halted just inside the door, but Back Hair Man didn’t seem to want to shoot, either.

“Just stay there,” he said, unnecessarily, his voice shaking.

Jean made her move then. Jean didn’t have the professor’s gift for confusion, calming, and planting outright falsehoods in people’s minds; she needed a lot of concentration for that, and it was so much easier to just pluck the rifle out of the man’s hands with her mind.

It was completely unexpected, at least for Back Hair Man, and he looked scared shitless for a second before he yelled out another warning to his hidden compatriots. “It’s muties, they’re dressed like cops, but they’re muties!”

That was when Scott realised what was going to happen. Realised it, and couldn’t stop it. He heard the sound of a door opening at the front of the house, and then gunshots and horrible male screams, and then below them a single shot.

One shot.

Jean went out back to offer what medical assistance she could, and Ororo held Back Hair Man, kneeling on the hairy back itself. Scott found the stairs and went down to the basement, knowing that he wasn’t going to like what he found.

A very tall and thin young man emerged at the foot of the stairs. He was white, and held a small handgun in a slack grip. “You’re too late,” he said. “You’re too late.”

Scott ignored him. There was a dark hall with a small door at the end of it, and the thin man followed Scott to the open doorway.

“It’s over, it’s too late. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking right.”

Scott had never met the Senator, only seen pictures. In those, the man had a lined and bony face with sharp cheekbones and clear eyes. He looked a bit like Bill Nye, Scott thought, a comparison that seemed like it should be funny. It wasn't, right now. When Scott thought back over the scene later, he couldn’t remember blood, but it must have been there: the man had been shot in the neck, lying on the mattress on the floor. The little room was dark except for some light seeping in around the edges of the window, which was covered up with plywood. In these cracks of light, Scott could see the body’s sharp profile, and the way its lips were drawn back from the teeth, as if it were smiling.

It, not he.

“What’s your name?” Scott asked the thin man, not very interested in the answer.

“Henri-Michel Marchand.”

“And you were just fucking determined to go away for murder, I guess?”

“No, no, we didn't plan this. We didn't want to. I got scared. I just got -- I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Scott wondered how that would hold up in the courts here. The Senator probably would have known.

* * *

Scott found out later that the other man, Sean Ferguson, had been in the front of the house, where another automatic rifle was kept in the hallway closet for emergencies. You know, the kind of emergencies where your yard is full of cops, or mutants, or both. When Back Hair Man, one Timothy Marks, yelled out that the attackers were “muties dressed as cops”, Ferguson happened to look out the front window and see _five_ goddamn muties dressed as cops, and promptly went out to open fire on them. Probably he had decided long ago to be a martyr to the cause, and probably he’d also encouraged the others to cut their losses if cops ever showed up. Shoot the hostage and go down with guns blazing, before you let society devolve into a chaos of mutual tolerance and respect.

Three officers were wounded, and one died en route to the hospital. Scott was actually pleased by these figures: one of the terrorists had died, sure, and one of the RCMP officers, and the hostage, but he had actually been expecting worse.

Summers, Grey, Monroe.

Brazeau, Fortier, Kelly, Waters, Thibeault.

McCree.

And Marks, Marchand, and Ferguson.

So McCree was dead, Thibeault was dead, Ferguson was dead. Fortier shot in the upper thigh, Waters in the shoulder. But the X-Men were unscathed. Could have been much worse, right?

No. Nope. That didn't make him feel better, not even a little bit. That was just rationalisation, his mind trying to pad the hard corners of his failure. He kept replaying the scenes in his mind: if Storm had gone with fog instead of rain, if they had kept Marks quiet somehow, if the X-Men had stayed in the front while the Mounties went in back, if someone had immediately gone downstairs to look for the Senator, if they hadn’t fucking got involved in the first place, if everything had been different. Scott thought of the sour old maxims his grandmother used to spout: _if wishes were horses then beggars could ride._

The house in Rockcliffe Park was cold and smelled faintly musty, as if the windows had been open during the rain. Scott and Jean sat on the worn brocade couch in the sitting room, and Ororo was perched on the edge of a wing chair by the door. Ready to leave the moment things got too personal. Ororo was never long in a place where she wasn’t wanted, and she had a knack for appearing when people needed her.

Joel and his mother sat on the other couch, next to the piano. Mrs. McCree looked like she wanted to put her arm around her son, but he was sitting too far away, not entirely visible but not quite absent either.

Scott did the talking, he narrated the story in the most calm and reasonable way he could muster, but there were still those wide holes, those things he didn’t understand. He tried to fill those with his opinions about Ferguson’s martyr complex, Marchand’s weird panic, Marks’s mistaken warning. But it all felt like blind stupid luck, like the improbable God had His eyes somewhere else.

Mrs. McCree cried a little, tears coming down silently. Probably she’d already resigned herself to this, and maybe it was a relief to know for sure. To know instead of guess, that was always comforting.

But Joel was just sitting, and in his half-invisible state, it was hard for the eye to focus on him. Scott found his gaze continually sliding back to look at the couch, at the floor, at the wall. It was frustrating. Scott wished the Professor were here.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Scott said, unable to think of anything better to finish with. “I wish we could have saved him.”

"Yeah, funny about that, I wish you could too,” said Mrs. McCree, and if the words were bitter she was still smiling through her tears. A generous person, Scott thought, wanted to comfort people even while they were trying to comfort her. He wondered again why her son was keeping his distance.

Joel seemed to realise that his half-presence was making people uncomfortable, so he faded into full view. He looked sick. “He was dead already when you got there, you said?”

Close enough, Scott thought. “Yes, he was.”

“He was wrong, then,” Joel said, almost to himself.

“Wrong about what, honey?”

“What he said on the phone. He didn’t get Last Rites.”

"Joel..." Mrs. McCree's hand fluttered upward, darting close to his shoulder and then up to her own face, wiping her eyes. "Don't. Not now."

"I'm not doing anything," Joel said, a genuine teenager-ish comment coming from him. "I just meant Dad said on the phone, he said he knew he wouldn't die there because he'd done the First Fridays. So he was wrong."

"I'm not sure I know what the First Fridays are," Jean said with a smile, her shoulders tight, trying to lead the conversation back onto more neutral ground.

"It doesn't matter," Mrs. McCree said. "He's just being morbid."

“Sorry.” And Joel retreated again into invisibility, all the way this time. Mrs. McCree said the same thing (“I’m sorry too,”) and left, unable to take it -- and Scott suspected that it was her invisible son that she was escaping, more than the three people who had given her the bad news.

* * *

Joel felt like doing something radical, like cutting off one of his hands – he wasn’t sure why. It just felt like a good idea. _That’ll show 'em,_ his brain was saying to itself, but the rest of him wasn’t really listening. The rest of him was busy thinking about the sentence he was going to have to say out loud to people for as long as he lived: _My father was murdered._

He added and subtracted the specifics: _when I was seventeen. Just before my eighteenth birthday. Near Christmas. In rural Quebec, north of Gatineau. By anti-mutant terrorists. In a police shootout._ None of these sounded very plausible, and yet they were true. He imagined his future audiences rolling their eyes, assuming he was making it all up.

What kind of lies would he make up to tell people, to keep them from being uncomfortable? Would he start calling it _the accident_ or something?

Mr. Summers and Dr. Grey were still downstairs; his mother had reappeared and Aunt Carmel was coming over in a few minutes to drive them to the hospital. Ms. Monroe had gone somewhere; ducking out of view when things got awkward and emotional.

Joel himself was in the bathroom, visible and solid. Way too solid, in fact. _O, that this too too solid flesh would melt..._ He was sitting on the edge of the tub with the cordless phone in his hands, debating whether to call Father Gilles now or later.

Now or later. At the moment his brain was made of rubber, except for that odd, persistent desire to cut off a limb. If Joel called now, he would have nothing to say. But later he might not have the -- what? -- _presence of mind_ to make the call.

No, now was better. He might score some points by making the call early, in fact. _Who’s resisting therapy now, huh?_ Dr. Xavier would have been his first choice, but that was a long way to call, and Joel was reluctant to disturb the Professor. Dr. Grey would do if Father Gilles wasn’t available.

He dialled the number for St. Rita’s, which was still in the phone’s memory from the days when he’d lived there. At the switchboard, he asked for Dr. Visineau’s extension.

Voice mail, in English and French. Usually Joel just hung up when he got voice mail, but this time he left a message, testing out the sound of his explanation. “Hello, Father, it’s, um, Joel McCree. We just...we just found out that my father was murdered, after all. So he’s dead. And...I guess I’d like it if you could call me back. Soon. You have our number, so...okay. Bye.”

It sounded pretty stupid, even to him.

Joel went to the sink and washed his hands with the old stained cake of Irish Spring in the dish. He washed all the way up to the elbow, bent and washed his face too, and when he came up he looked in the mirror and saw his father’s face again. It was the nose, the line of his nose.

His father’s shaving things were still on the bathroom counter. The old brush, which he didn’t use anymore, the ceramic dish with the lid that held the cake of old-fashioned shaving soap, ancient history. His father didn't like to throw things out. They'd never had that sitcom-cliché father-son moment of _c'mere, son, let me teach you how to shave._ Joel had been in the hospital and a male nurse had taught him the ropes instead. But he did remember the sound of the electric razor, and he turned it on, just to hear the high-pitched buzz that was so familiar from 6:15 every morning. He played around with the trimmer attachments, and then impulsively lifted it up and began shearing the hair from his head.

It felt dangerous, as if he might cut straight through to his brain, so he stopped. But it was too late, because the razor had eaten up about four inches square, exposing a tantalising section of bristly white scalp. Combing over that wouldn’t hide anything. Curls of reddish-brown hair lay in the sink, looking unfamiliar and strange, and Joel picked them out before he continued.

When he was finished, he ran his hands over his head, to find the remaining long pieces, and was satisfied. Less than two centimetres long all over, unsophisticated, brutal. Like a mourner in the ancient world. It said _something happened to me_ , it said _I lost something._

But this wasn’t for his father, not entirely. It was penance. And it would grow back.

The phone, lying on the back of the toilet, chirruped. Joel checked the Call Display before answering.

“Hello, Father.”


	11. And Those at Sea

_No one likes having offended another person;_  
_hence everyone feels so much better if the other person_  
_doesn't show he's been offended. Nobody likes being_  
_confronted by a wounded spaniel. Remember that._  
_It is much easier patiently -- and tolerantly --_  
_to avoid the person you have injured than to_  
_approach him as a friend. You need courage for that._  
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, _Culture and Value_

It was five in the morning when Joel awoke. His eyes were clear; there was no sleep left. The attic was cold, snow thucking softly against the screens on the window. He got up, feeling a strange nervousness about lying down, as if someone might burst in the door to catch him unawares. The wise and foolish virgins, he thought, the Hebrews grabbing their unleavened bread. _Therefore keep awake_ , a phrase that Father Gilles always liked to come back to again and again in Lent and Advent, words that he invested with some opaque personal significance.

"Mornings are the worst time of day for me," went one of the classic depression screening test questions, of which Joel had answered many. It wasn't always true; sometimes mornings were the best part of the day in the hospitals, when he was still a little groggy from his night pills, solid enough to dress, eat, placidly go through the fifteen minute check in with the team of doctors and their wary students.

But at home, mornings meant he had to make a bunch of decisions and take care of a lot of bullshit maintenance of his body. He sat on the edge of the bed, trying to plan what he would wear. If he didn’t plan, sometimes the drawers full of clothes were impossible to deal with. When he was home, his mother always washed his clothes, folded them, put them in the drawers for him, and sometimes when he saw those rows of folded shirts and pants in there he was just too ashamed to keep going.

Okay, so socks were obvious. Underwear, easy. He'd gained some weight at the mansion, so he'd have to try a couple of pairs of jeans before he found ones that fit. The thin black hoodie that was beginning to fade to charcoal. And shoes, in case he had to run. 

Because it was five a.m. An unsafe hour, a time when everyone else was asleep and he was on his own. Joel was uncomfortable even with his own family, but he liked to know that there were other people in the house, awake and going about their business. But asleep they were no good to him. Formerly reliable people were utterly different in their sleep, murmuring angrily into their pillows or silently weeping or just lying still, wrapped up in their private visions. Five in the morning wasn't so bad, and Joel could console himself by thinking that if emergency struck, he could wake others up without feeling too guilty, but it was still an hour at which he was afraid.

He sat down again on the bed, picked up the wooden-beaded rosary from the bedside table, and kissed the crucifix. Not to make himself feel better, but just to make himself known. The big black side of death was cruising past like a ship, and he was in a little rowboat in the wake of it. He had to make a noise so it would hear him, so it would not just swallow him under but pass by, pass by. Doubt or distress, that was what they called it on the water when you were signalling for help.

God, to be all alone and know what was coming.

Dad _must_ have known. Marchand had snapped suddenly, sure, but before that? You would have to have an inkling. You would wait for it, imagine how it might happen. Wonder if you’d rather be shot in the head or the heart. The neck was a nice compromise, wasn’t it? Probably there was time, no matter what Mr. Summers had said. There was time, bleeding to death there on that mattress in the basement. It would be quick but you would have the time for a last gasp, last thoughts. Dad was always too embarrassed to talk directly about God, even though he went to Mass every week, even though he'd always insisted that Joel have a Catholic education. But sometimes Dad did talk about _the good and the fine_ , about what you should think about when you knew your number was up. “Your last thoughts should be of goodness, the things you were grateful for, the people you love best.” He would say that while watching the news, or upon hearing of the deaths of other people. Hearing about sudden deaths always bothered him, and when someone died in hospital he'd say, "At least they had some quiet, they had some time to think before it happened."

So had his father had time for that? Choking on his own blood while hearing the screams of wounded Mounties outside, the footsteps of Mr. Summers on the stairs...Joel knew he shouldn’t dwell on the scene, but he couldn’t stop imagining it, putting himself on the mattress with a bullet in his own throat.

No, you would not be able to think gratefully upon your life. Not like that. You would be terrified and alone and in incredible pain.

The Nine First Fridays was an old Catholic devotion that promised (among other things) that you'd get a chance to have the sacraments from a priest before dying. _Against a sudden and unprovided death._ You went to a daily Mass for the first Friday in the month, nine months in a row, in honour of the Sacred Heart. Joel had done it himself, dragged along with his father at seven in the morning one year when he was nine.

Joel had tried to explain this context to Father Gilles on the phone, and had failed.

“The sacraments aren’t magic, Joel, you know that,” Father Gilles had said on the phone. “And neither are the Nine First Fridays. God isn’t going to send your father to hell for missing a chance to have anointing and Viaticum. It isn’t a requirement for getting into heaven, and even if it were, there’s such a thing as extenuating circumstances. I think being held captive in a fanatic’s basement counts.”

But that wasn’t the point, and as usual, Joel couldn’t quite make himself clear. The point was that a promise was a promise, like Dad had said on the phone. The point was that you ought to get a chance to get your head together before you died. Even Marin Leavitt got that chance, dying in the hospital. Maybe it was a nasty death, going slowly, but it was worse, Joel thought, to be cut down so abruptly, as if you didn’t have a mind, as if you didn’t matter. Take, for instance, the Mounties who had died that way on the Hill, coming around a corner to investigate and BANG--

Mr. Summers had said that Marchand apologised, that he babbled his “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to” ravings until the Mounties put him in cuffs. Joel wondered if he meant it. How much would that matter, if he did? How sorry did someone have to be, after all?

_Now and at the hour of our death._ It was all so hard and cruel, and what was wrong with people anyway? What the fuck was wrong with them? Didn’t anybody understand?

* * *

Two days later, the wake. Not a real wake, Aunt Carmel said. Real wakes were not held in funeral homes, and lasted longer than eight hours, and had little or nothing to do with tea in Styrofoam cups. She talked about gallons of tea stewing in giant stock pots on the stove, bodies on the kitchen table, houses crowded with half the town, and other stuff that sounded to Joel like a Pogues song. All the socialising at a traditional wake would have made him have a meltdown, and he was okay with the more antiseptic version in the funeral home. The funeral director was a nice guy, who'd given Joel's mother a big brochure full of coffins and urns, circling the best-sellers in pen.

So here he was at the wake, and he wasn't crying or freaking out. One of his cousins on the McCree side had walked in and collapsed right away in tears, clinging to his uncle Martin, sobbing loudly: "What are we going to do without him?"

It made Joel feel guilty, that some more distant relative seemed to need Dad more than he did, that he couldn't do the performance right. But the words kept rattling around in his head, _what are we going to do without him?_

Aunt Carmel and Nana leaned on each other as they stood over the coffin with Joel and his mother. “They always do come in threes,” Nana lamented. "Brian and Greg went first, last year."

The body, the strangely unimportant body, was white and doughy-looking. They'd chosen a plain coffin from the brochure, the plainest of plain oak, made by monks somewhere up in Quebec, because Joel’s father had said once that he hated fancy coffins and thought they were tasteless. _What's all this chrome on the sides, is it a goddamn Chevy Silverado? What's the point, who gets to enjoy it?_

“My goodness, will you look at him, though,” Aunt Carmel said, in her slightly-too-loud voice. “They didn’t do a very good job, did they? He doesn’t look at all like himself. The man who did Brian up, you’d have thought he was just asleep.”

“Well, Brian never looked very well. Always had a cross mug on him, people like that look better once they’re dead. Gives the face a rest.”

“He wasn’t like that all the time, but he had a hard life, you know. Wouldn't blame him a bit for scowling through his last two decades. Putting up with a wife like his.”

“It was really her sister.”

“She was the real problem, you’re right. Poor Brian was lucky to get by her without catching a bullet himself.”

The two old women laughed. Carmel rubbed Lillian’s back meditatively.

The bullet wound was still visible in the neck, if you knew where to look. But if you ignored that, if you ignored the face that looked too fat -- yes, it was him, just as if he were at work. Dark suit, tie Liberal red. A tiny maple leaf pin on the lapel. All that was missing was the white wire coming down from the ear; his father had never become quite fluent in French. He could order dinner or yell at bad drivers in Quebec, but he couldn't follow a technical conversation.

Lillian touched the body’s forehead with the backs of her fingers, then drew her hand away. She sniffed deeply and turned to Aunt Carmel for a hug. “It was just so fast, so fast.”

Joel did not touch the body, and didn’t want to. The body didn’t look like a person, but like a cunning replica. Once, at some gallery in the city, Joel had seen a hyperrealist sculpture of an old woman eating ice cream. It had scared him at first. After he realised that the woman wasn’t real, he had been angry: it was cruel, to reproduce a woman’s wrinkles that way, to show the droplet of drool hanging from her lip as she ate. The sculpture was a sign of contempt. And he felt the same way about the body of his father, somehow, even though the morticians had done their best to cover every ugliness.

Carmel and Nana were taking the right attitude towards a thing like this, he thought. This was just a wax-museum example of the undertaker’s art, not a person -- not anymore.

Father Gilles wandered up to the coffin, peered inside, and then said quietly to Joel, “How are you doing?”

Joel just shrugged. Father led him out of the room, downstairs to the basement.

“I’ve discovered a secret: there’s a teapot down here.” He opened a door and gestured grandly, showing the tiny kitchen and the teapot on the counter. “You still have to drink from a Styrofoam cup, but at least the tea is brewed properly.”

Father sank down into one of the chairs at the little kitchen table. The chairs looked like they were about fifty years old, with cracked plastic cushions. “ _Assieds-toi._ I wanted to ask if you would read at the funeral tomorrow.”

Joel had known he was going to get roped into reading something, but he actually didn't mind doing that. So long as he had words to say typed out in front of him, he could deal with opening his mouth to speak them. It wasn't like trying to keep a conversation going. "Yeah, sure."

“Good. Do you want the Psalm or the OT reading?"

"What's the OT?"

"Job, I think. _I know that my Redeemer liveth_ , that one."

"That's fine, yeah, I'll do that one." It would be the first reading, so he could get it over with and then zone out until Communion.

"Excellent, thank you. Just remind me to give you the sheet before I go.”

Joel poured tea into one of the Styrofoam cups. "It doesn't really feel like we're anywhere near Christmas."

"No, it doesn't at all."

“And, um, I haven’t received in a while.”

“What’s a while?”

“Since I was at St. Rita’s.”

“So what, a month or two? Are you kidding? I’ve talked to people who haven’t had Communion in forty years." Father Gilles ducked his head a little, trying to make eye contact. "So I guess you haven’t been going to Mass down there in New York? You usually go. How do you feel about that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, pretend you do know. Make something up. How might a person like you feel if he hadn’t been to church in a couple of months?”

Joel felt embarrassed, and said nothing.

“Like, just maybe,” said Father Gilles, “he might feel strongly enough about it that he would mention it to a priest. Hypothetically. But how is he really feeling? Happy to have a chance to go back again? Or is he feeling guilty?”

“The second one.”

“Well, don't feel guilty. I’ll hear your confession before you go, if you want. Guilt is not a healthy thing, especially for you. Ignatius wrote about what he called the delicate conscience. Someone who is predisposed to feel guilty about things can go too far, and become very upset even when he hasn’t done anything wrong.”

Joel could have answered easily that he did do wrong things, whole truckloads of wrong things, so this didn’t really apply to him, but it was often hard to stop Father Gilles once he got going. He listened for a while as the priest talked about the Spiritual Exercises, about the difference between paralysing guilt and real sorrow for your sins and shortcomings, about the need to have compassion for yourself. They were back in the consulting-room at St. Rita’s, playing the same game they had played every morning for two years.

“Have mercy on yourself or no one else will,” Father said at one point, and Joel could not pay attention after that. Who could say that to someone? Who could say it at a wake? What was the matter with people?

As if from force of habit, he began to disappear, with the usual sensation in his inner ear of falling, a long elevator plunge. Dr. Xavier always stopped when this happened. Usually he waited for a few minutes, and then if his patient did not reappear, he would turn to his books, make phone calls, go on with his life. Father Gilles didn’t do things that way; he filled in the half-hour every morning, talking even if he couldn’t prove anyone was listening.

Joel used to loathe those sessions, hated the interrogation and the smug I-know-what-your-problem-is posturing. The only thing he hated more was group, and, well -- most people hated group. At St. Rita’s it was one thing, because you had a lot of time on your hands. But here in the basement of the suburban funeral home, he was bored, sick of the priest and sick of his own daydreams.

He left Father Gilles in the little kitchen, who was still talking to the empty air. Joel drifted back upstairs, to the funeral home’s front hallway, where he suddenly stopped. At first he wasn’t sure he was seeing properly, so he adjusted his state until his vision was closer to normal.

Amanda Kilborne was standing just inside the doors. She was reading the names on the board, looking like she was working up the nerve to follow the numbers to the right room.

Besides her, the hall was empty, and Joel thought he was the first one who had spotted her. She wasn’t an attention-grabber, even though she was pretty. One of those girls who seemed to lack physical flaws, so your interest slides away. Her blonde hair was tied back and she wore dark grey, as she often did to work.

Joel absolutely did not want any scenes at his father’s wake. He made a decision and surfaced back into his body, appearing a few feet away from Amanda. She staggered backwards, but he walked straight past her to the doors, whispering, “I think if they see you, you’ll get thrown out.”

“But you’ll talk to me?” she said.

She wanted to talk? "I guess."

Amanda had never spoken to him voluntarily. When forced by her job to give him a message, she always did it abruptly, either not looking him in the eye or staring as if he were a picture, an image on the TV screen, something that couldn’t look back.

They went out to the funeral home’s parking lot, and Amanda lit up a smoke. Joel sat down on the dry edge of the curb, upwind of her, and waited for her to begin. The funeral home was in a neighbourhood called Blossom Park, of all things, but all he could see across the four-lane were stores: Mark’s Work Wearhouse, a Home Depot, a mattress store, and off in the distance, a McDonalds.

Amanda took a deep drag of her cigarette and said, “Okay, so, I don’t know if you’ll want to hear this, but...I saw Henri-Michel last night, and he made me promise to tell you that he’s just incredibly sorry.”

Joel looked up at her, analysing the tone. Sorry, as in _sorry for your loss_? Or as in an admission of guilt?

“I mean,” Amanda said, sounding nervous now, “I mean he’s really messed up about it. I know that probably doesn’t make it any better, but he wouldn’t stop crying and saying he wishes he could take it back.”

That constituted “being messed up”? Joel thought it was about the right reaction to have when you had just murdered a man in cold blood. Well, maybe not cold blood. The heat of passion wasn’t the right idea either -- panic was a very cold passion. Basically, he thought, if you had a gun and a reason to panic, then killing someone was a pretty likely result. So the real crime was acquiring a gun in the first place; Joel knew he was panicky, for instance, so he had always had the sense to stay away from guns. And he also didn’t keep victims in his basement. That was what Marchand had to answer for.

“Say something,” Amanda said.

“When...when did you know, know for sure, what he was going to do?” he asked, looking at her feet. Smooth black pumps. “When you got him the job? When you told him, like, my dad’s schedule and stuff?”

She flicked away her cigarette butt, lit another one. Her heels scraped on the pavement as she pivoted back and forth, looking around as if she wanted to make sure they were alone. “If I tell you all that, will you tell the cops, or testify against me?”

"If I think there's something to testify about, sure." Closure wasn't worth ruining the case.

“Oh great. Well, you don’t get any answers, then.”

“Fine.” Joel got up again, ready to go back inside.

"Wait, hold up, just..." Amanda hadn’t been expecting that response, apparently. "I do want to talk, okay?"

"I don't think I have anything much to say, actually," Joel said, but then he found that he did have another question. “Well -- okay, just...what is it with you and Henri-Michel? What is it about the, um, the mutant issue that pisses you off so much?”

“I don’t hate _all_ mutants,” she said, as if she were tired of having to repeat her position. "I don't hate them at all, I'm not afraid of them, I don't have a goddamn _phobia._ "

“You seem kind of bugged by me, though. And I’m not sure why, because I’ve never done anything to you.” He tried not to make it sound like an accusation, just a casual remark, something he had noticed. He didn't have the energy for a fight.

She turned her head to stare at him, her Ripley’s Believe it or Not stare. “Uh, seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Look, it's not that you've _done_ anything to me. It's not about that. Am I 'bugged' by you, okay, sure. Yes. I’ve been working for your mother for more than two years,” she said. “I saw -- I saw the way you had to live, okay? In and out of hospitals all the time, couldn’t go to school, couldn’t eat. You always seemed to be...even when you were visible, it was like you weren’t really there. How could I see that and not think...you know?”

“What?”

“How could I look at you and not think that you would have been better off if they’d had pre-natal testing for mutation back then? Or whatever -- what if vaccinations really do trigger the gene? What if something could have been done to prevent this? Don't get excited, I'm just saying. What does your mutation do for you? It makes you miserable. Is it worth it for you to live like this? So yeah, it bothers me to see someone hurting like that.”

Joel nodded, to keep her talking. He wanted to hear how she made sense of her position, but he felt like the breath had been knocked out of him.

“It’s not across-the-board,” she said, almost reassuringly. “I’m not an extremist like -- like Henri-Michel. He is, I'll admit that. He's really intense about this issue, and it used to scare me a lot. But me, I just don’t think we should be celebrating an illness. If mutants are a group that should be protected, what about people with genetic diseases? Suppose we came up with a way to prevent Down’s Syndrome from developing, wouldn’t you be in favour of that? But talk about curing mutants and everyone acts like you’re Hitler. And are you any less sick than a kid with Down’s Syndrome? He’s probably happier than you.”

“Happiness,” said Joel, because now he felt he had to defend himself somehow, “isn’t -- it’s not the most important thing in life.”

“Well, I don’t agree with you. Most people wouldn't. Happiness is pretty fucking important. I’m not crazy, okay? I’m not a bad person. But I don’t think you’re happy being alive. And you must think the same or you wouldn’t have tried to kill yourself at Marin Leavitt’s house.”

“What do you know about why I did that?” Joel said, dimly aware that he was getting angry, although his voice was still quiet. “What would you know about it? I was plenty miserable before my mutation ever manifested, I can tell you that for nothing.”

She stared off towards the McDonalds, smoke trailing east. “Sorry.”

“You weren’t there then. You don’t know.”

“Okay. I don’t. But still...does it matter how you felt before I met you? You were a mutant since you were conceived, no matter when it manifested.”

_Since you were conceived._ Those words wormed into his brain, and he knew he would be turning them over and over some night instead of sleeping. _Have mercy on yourself, or no one else will._

“I don't want you killed, I don't want you to get hurt,” Amanda went on, “but if your mother had done a pre-natal test and wanted to terminate, because she knew--”

“Okay, you can stop.”

“I think she’d have the right to. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I'm serious, okay? Stop talking.”

“Haven’t you thought about it? That’s why this bothers you, isn’t it? You probably sat up there in your attic wishing you were never born, but you don’t want other people to agree with you.”

Joel bent forward, looking down at the tires of the cars, the squares of snow on the traffic islands. When he was away, he always remembered Ottawa as beautiful and gracious, not small and bland like this. He thought of the Gothic towers and the bridges and the sedate bronze statues, not Mark’s Work Wearhouse. But this was the same city. The bell-tongued city with its glorious towers and convenient shopping.

“I’m not saying I want you dead,” Amanda said again. “I’m saying you deserved to be born normal.”

“But that wasn’t an option. You know? I’m either alive or I’m dead. There’s no normal version of me floating around somewhere. This is all. This is it.” Joel looked over at her and tried to smile, but it didn’t work; she just looked back at him blankly.

“We’ll agree to disagree. I didn’t come here to fight over this.” She blew out a jet of smoke, crushed out her cigarette with her foot, and stood up again. “I wanted to pay my respects, and apologise, but since I’m not allowed inside I guess this will have to do.”

“You coming to the funeral Mass tomorrow?” Joel asked.

Amanda hesitated for a second. “Am I allowed?”

“I’ll talk to my mom.”

She squinted at him, as if trying to understand why he would do something like that. “Where is it?”

“St. Patrick’s, on Kent and Nepean. Ten a.m.”

“Okay.”

Why _did_ he want her there? Because she was part of the whole mess, he decided. She was involved, so why bar her from the funeral but ask relatives they hardly knew to attend?

Amanda turned again to leave, then stopped. “Do you think your mom will give me a reference for my next job? Like, just to say I worked there, at least?”

“I don’t know.” He had to be honest. “I doubt it.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry.”

She left, heading up the street to the bus stop. Joel dusted off the seat of his pants and went back inside to make his confession to Father Gilles before the priest had to leave.

* * *

St. Patrick’s, Charles thought, had the same problem that Notre Dame did: a vast excess of decoration, crowds of saints on the walls, even some blue Christmas lights arranged around the Virgin’s head. The windows were beautiful, though, and Charles found himself examining them instead of paying attention to the service. Some he couldn’t identify, pictures of nuns and men in surplices, but others were familiar images. The Prodigal Son falling into his father’s arms.

There was standing room only in the church, despite the weather. In the whirling snow that fell over the city, Charles had worried that the plane wouldn’t make it down in time, and now the flakes had thinned out. _Small flakes, big storm_ , said his cab driver. Certainly the snow was showing no signs of slowing down. Skimming gently through the minds of the people crowded in the church, Charles found politicians, civil servants, journalists, students of Mrs. McCree, past and present (for once, Charles wasn’t the only one in a wheelchair), lawyers, professors, and doctors.

When it was time for the first reading, Joel came forward and stepped up to the lectern. Charles was a little surprised, but he had known a few people with severe social problems who could still read in public: they weren’t brilliant orators, but they didn’t fall to pieces because “the audience” was large enough that they couldn’t monitor individual facial reactions. It might be good to encourage the boy to do more of this sort of thing, Charles thought; perhaps it would build confidence.

Joel stood at the lectern, smoothed out the page with one hand, and bent towards the microphone. "A reading from the book of Job. And Job said to them, 'Like a slave, sighing for the shade, or a hireling with no thought but for his wages, I have months of futility assigned to me, nights of suffering to be my lot. Lying in bed, I wonder, "When will it be day?" No sooner up than, "When will evening come?" And crazy thoughts obsess me until twilight falls.'"

His voice had begun to shake. He took a pause, and it was a long pause. Some of the standing mourners began to shift their weight, whisper to each other. Almost everyone there seemed to know what the problem was, and they watched helplessly, with the kind of pained sympathy reserved for children who fall at their dance recitals. Charles closed his eyes and sent a mental impression of calm to the boy, lowering his cortisol levels so that he could stop shaking. Joel found his place again with his finger, and when he spoke again his voice was stronger.

"'My flesh is rotting under my skin, my bones are sticking out like teeth. Pity me, pity me, my friends, since I have been struck by the hand of God. Must you persecute me just as God does, and give my body no peace? Will no one let my words be recorded, inscribed on some monument, with iron chisel and engraving tool, cut into the rock forever?'"

He didn’t deliver the lines with righteous anger, as a budding actor would do. He read as if he were telling the sad ending of an old story, the sort of story that could end no other way. Charles couldn't tell if the choice of reading was a cruel joke on Visineau's part or if it was just meant to be something that would speak to Joel.

The kid kept reading, in his quiet voice.

“‘I know that I have a living Defender, and that he will rise up last, on the dust of the earth. After my awakening, he will set me close by him, and from my flesh I shall look on God. He whom I shall see will take my part; I shall be looking on no stranger.’ The word of the Lord.”

“Thanks be to God,” said Charles with the congregation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reading is from Job 7:1-4 and 19:20-27 in the Jerusalem Bible, which offers a particularly vigorous translation. 
> 
> The title is from an aphorism variously attributed to Socrates, Greek fishermen, and Arab thinkers, roughly running, "There are three groups of people: the living, the dead, and those at sea."


	12. Citizens and Suns

### Americanized society

The gruesome murder of James McCree should be a wake-up call to Canadians everywhere: the mutant issue is out of control and our leaders are complicit in unleashing this chaos on our country. In their haste to Americanize this society as quickly as possible, they allowed a foreign paramilitary group with absolutely no official standing to interfere in an RCMP arrest. Would McCree and the slain RCMP officer be alive today had Sherbrooke told the X-Men that Canada was not a battleground for American mutants? We shall never know.  
**Albert Holman, Barrhaven.**

### Bravo, Flip-Flops

I welcomed the Prime Minister’s announcement that our country would finally come to a democratic decision about mutants. Unelected justices and MPs who have long ago stopped listening to their constituents are no substitute for a referendum. Of course it’s politically incorrect to say anything critical about the dead, but it should not be forgotten that Mr. McCree lost his seat and his cabinet post for good reason. He rebounded back into Parliament when Sherbrooke needed to stuff the Senate (are Senators ever appointed for any other reason?), even though the people of his constituency had made it clear they weren't impressed by pro-mutant politicking. Finally, Sherbrooke's flip-flopping has accidentally resulted in an appropriate, constructive decision.  
**Diane Kirby, Orleans.**

### Tired of Funerals

Is anyone else tired of these funerals making it onto the national news? I know the media has been dubbing this “terrorism” in order to squeeze all the money they can from a national tragedy, but enough is enough. No one needed to turn on CBC and see a funeral procession for a politician who was never a head of state and who never got this kind of media attention while he was alive. Close-ups of his widow and mutant son in the very sanctuary of St. Patrick’s were utterly unnecessary. Let’s keep things in proportion, please, and give the poor man’s family some space.  
**John Burton, Ottawa.**

I notice that Dean Henstock and Marin Leavitt didn't receive any up-to-the-minute CBC coverage of their funerals. Is this more Liberal favouritism from Sherbrooke, or just the CBC fawning, Trudeau-style, over McCree's more charismatic mourners? Lillian O'Brien McCree has certainly not hesitated to act as the star of the show, giving interviews to all and sundry and using the occasion to trumpet her pet causes. It's a shame to see that politicians from Quebec still run this town, to the exclusion of everyone else.  
**Felicity Mathers, Calgary, AB.**

### Witchy woman?

 _Re: Feminism bankrupt_  
Shame on letter-writer Teresa Spier for accusing Jim McCree's widow of grandstanding, and shame on her in particular for using such childish language as "rhymes-with-witch." Is Ms. Spier twelve years old? Lillian McCree is a longtime advocate of mutant rights, just as her husband was, and his death was an overtly political murder. She has every right to make her views and those of her late husband known, and the objections to that which have appeared in the Citizen smack of misogyny and anti-mutant bigotry. Ottawa could use more rhymes-with-witches like her.  
**David Thompson, Vancouver, BC.**

### Quebec Shafted

The media has already been beating the long-dead horse of the FLQ, perhaps under the mistaken impression that similar tactics equal similar motives. Of course, now that it has come out that one of the kidnappers was francophone, we in Quebec can look forward to more finger-pointing from English Canada over the coming weeks. When the First Ministers’ Conference is called to amend the Charter, Quebec’s previous crimes against Constitutional efficiency will be rehashed yet again. When an anglo politician is murdered by anglo terrorists, Quebec still gets the shaft.  
**Marc Lebeau, Buckingham, PQ.**

### Ears of Politicians Dominated

The murders of James McCree, Dean Henstock, and the other victims of this summer’s “Capital Crisis” are inexcusable acts of an extremist minority, but we at the National Association of Canadian Human Activists (NACHA) do not wish for our message to be discredited by the actions of a few. We stand for a Canada in which the human majority has the right to free speech and democracy, not dominated by a few mutant advocates who have the ears of high-placed politicians in Ottawa. Public policy, particularly in the areas of health and criminal justice, must reflect the need to protect the many rather than advancing the interests of a few. In the actions of the X-Men, we have seen that mutants believe that might makes right, and that their unearned powers give them the right to manipulate situations that are none of their business. We can look forward to more foul-ups like this if the government continues to keep such strange bedfellows. We are encouraged, however, by the news of a First Ministers' Conference, which will restore the position of democracy in the debate. We congratulate Mr. Sherbrooke on his decision to put Canada first.  
**Thomas Welting**  
**National Association of Canadian Human Activists**  
**Ottawa**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gentle satire of letters to the editor in Ottawa newspapers, particularly the _Citizen._ This was originally a deleted scene, but I thought that it added some extra shading to the political angles of the plot.


	13. A Mess That Deserves a Big 'No'

_There are very few overtly crazy people in Ottawa,_  
_such as you see cracked by the pressure of more terrible capitals,_  
_but I suspect a hidden strain of suppressed eccentricity._  
_... If Ottawa were ever to relax its self-discipline and its conventions,_  
_a surprising gaiety, bravado, and individualism might bubble out,_  
_infused I dare say with neurosis._  
—Jan Morris, _City to City_

Christmas was a zombie holiday that year, just going through the motions. Joel refused to go to Carmel's house, not wanting to be uprooted any more than he already was, and definitely not for the dubious privilege of "not being alone on Christmas." Alone sounded good to him. His mother tried to force the issue, and he stuck to his guns; in the end, she let him win and stayed at the house over the holiday. He hadn't thought ahead enough to do any shopping, but under the tree was a box from the Apple Store: Dad had got him a new Macbook to replace the dying old one, and it had been sitting in the closet waiting. Any other year, it would have been a great gift, but now Joel could only think that it was the last Christmas present he was ever going to get from his father -- shiny and fun and useful, sure, but also impersonal. When he plugged it in and opened the lid, he felt...yup, there it was, guilty. _Right on time._

His birthday fell on December 28, and thus it had always been a pretty anticlimactic affair. His parents used to try their best to make it special, but it was hard to fight against the exhaustion after Christmas. Dad liked to take him out to the Museum of Nature ("the dinosaur museum", Joel had always called it as a kid) and then the family would have dinner at a Chinese restaurant, and that was as much celebration as anyone could tolerate. This year there was no visit to the dinosaur museum, but Joel and his mother did go to the Chinese restaurant as usual, both of them pretending to be doing okay. He cracked his fortune cookie open in the car, another important part of the birthday ritual. 

_Isn't there something else you should be working on now?_ it said.

He usually took his birthday fortune cookie message more seriously than it deserved, a clue as to what the next year would hold. But this one seemed like a dud. He didn't have anything better to do than what he was doing, which was (sort of) getting better. Probably he was failing at that too. 

 

After New Year's, Joel heard the noise at dawn, half asleep. An ordinary noise: the sound of an office chair sliding across the floor, two storeys down.

 _Don't check it,_ he told himself. _There's nothing there._ He had made that mistake often enough, hearing the razor going in the bathroom in the morning, or a sigh and a rattling of the newspaper in the evening.

Joel would have stayed in bed and tried to forget about the sound of the chair's casters rolling over the floorboards, but he heard the sound again -- he was sure this time. There might be somebody in the house.

He sat up and put on a pair of grey jogging pants, his shoes, and a t-shirt from a CHEO fundraiser. The shirt had a teddy bear on it, just the thing to strike fear into the heart of an intruder. He faded out to his invisible state and drifted down to his father's study.

His father had always kept the study door closed and locked; Joel as a very young boy had been inclined to wander into places where he wasn't welcome and help himself to paper for drawing on. He was always stealthy about it, and would only take one sheet from a stack of pages and leave the rest undisturbed. After being humiliated a few times at work, his father declared the study verboten and never reversed the decree as Joel got older.

It was strange now to see the door standing open, the dark blue light of dawn coming through the windows. Joel stole inside, and saw his mother sitting at his father's big desk. Returning to visibility, he asked, "What's going on?"

His mother jerked violently before seeing that it was him. "God, Joel, don't do that to me at this hour." She put her hand drolly on her chest and forced a smile. "I couldn't sleep so I decided to get up and work on responding to all these letters and cards."

Every clear surface in the study was stacked with mail, and a Loeb's bag on the floor was filled with shed envelopes. Much of the mail was from strangers, people all across the country who knew them only from the news. Mass cards from all their relatives, now numbering in the hundreds. But Joel had not forgotten the mail bombs, and was antsy being around large piles of envelopes.

"You're being careful?" he said.

"I'm being careful, relax." She heard something in his voice and turned her chair around. "Are you all right? Why are you up so early?"

"I'm fine. I just heard -- I heard you moving around down here."

"Are you sleeping okay?"

"I'm _fine_ ," he repeated, even though he wasn't sleeping well at all.

"You seem very anxious."

 _No kidding._ He didn't answer, because he was tired and knew it was the truth. Getting better, yes, despite that sour twisting grief in his stomach, but still anxious. Maybe he would always be that way.

His mother sighed. "Have you given any thought toward putting that money away?"

"Not really." His inheritance from his father was enormous, at least to him. "Aren't you just going to stick it in a trust fund or something?"

"I can have that done if you want me to, but you're eighteen now. You should start learning how to make decisions about this stuff."

"Maybe I'll give it to St. Rita's. Or the Professor."

"Yeah, right. Not all of it, you won't," his mother said, her voice brooking no argument. "I want you to put a sensible amount by for university. You can put the rest in our mutual fund if you don't know what else to do with it. But keep enough to graduate, and after that you can live like a hermit if you want to -- at least you'll have a degree."

"I guess."

She turned and looked at him, squinting at his face as if he had said something strange. "Do you think it's time to go see Father Gilles? Or to go back to New York?"

"Mom, no."

She looked back down at the Mass card she was replying to. "Are you thinking about hurting yourself?"

"No. I'm -- no. Sorry." He didn't even know what the apologies were for anymore; he just threw them at everyone, hoping they would stick. The Professor had been right about that. He turned back to the door.

His mother, unexpectedly, leapt up from behind him and slammed the door shut before he could leave.

"Now, you listen to me," she said in a quiet, fierce voice. "You listen to me," she said again, but could not finish. She was shaking, and all of a sudden she looked very old and very guilty. She hadn't looked like that at his father's funeral, or during visits to St. Rita's, or in the intensive care ward years ago. But now looked as old as Aunt Carmel, as if all of that pain was hitting her at once, with nowhere else for it to go, and he knew the universe would split apart if she didn't calm down.

Joel was terrified. He hugged her, to make her stop shaking. "I'm sorry, Mom, I'm sorry. It's okay, don't...please don't cry, Mom, I'm sorry. I'll go, I'll go."

* * *

Father Gilles offered Joel an appointment once a week, until he felt ready to go back to Westchester. A considerable sacrifice of time; the priest had plenty to do at St. Rita's, but Jim McCree had been a major contributor to the place. Joel himself, feeling the weight of the money pressing down on him, couldn't help wondering if Father Gilles was angling for a bit more of the famous McCree philanthropy.

Not a kind thought. But Joel was not a kind person, as he explained to Father Gilles.

"People think that, when you're shy," he said during Reconciliation, which they were appending to their sessions. "They think if you're quiet then you must be nice. But I'm not, I'd be a total asshole if I had the courage."

Father Gilles just nodded, and this was what Joel loved about Reconciliation. No arguments, no pompous announcements that he was seeing things all wrong. Sometimes there were corrections, but they were neutral, objective: _did you intend to do it? then it's not a sin._. "Why, what do you think about doing?"

"I'd -- I don't know. I'd tell people off more. I get angry and there's just nowhere for it to go, because I'm so scared of people."

"Who do you get angry at?"

"My mother. She's always going through my things, coming into my room without knocking."

"Normal stuff, for a parent and a teenager."

"No, it's worse. She says I'm doing this to myself."

"You're doing what to yourself?"

"All this, all of it." Joel gestured helplessly. He never liked to list his problems, give them their proper names. "Every conversation lately, it's all about how I should be doing something and am I suicidal again and don't I care about her. She doesn't say it's my fault, that's all subtext. But everything's subtext in my house."

"And you're angry."

"Yes."

Father Gilles nodded again, and Joel continued listing his sins. "Laundry list stuff," he said when Joel was finished. "You're not a bad kid, you know. Sure, people think the quiet, smart kid is a saint, but you're only human and you've had a lot to put up with. But we need somewhere for the anger to go, eh? It can't bust out at your mother and you can't keep turning it on yourself. Your penance is one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and you have to call up an old friend you haven't seen in a while."

"I don't have any old friends."

"Yes you do. Right here in St. Rita's you have friends, in fact. People have asked after you."

"They want gossip. That doesn't mean anything."

"Okay, ease up on them, wildman. Curiosity and concern are natural. They bring us to compassion, not just to gossip. Let's have an Act of Contrition."

Joel stumbled through an extempore prayer and bowed his head through the absolution. This, he thought, was what regular therapy couldn't offer. Dr. Xavier never acknowledged that Joel had real reasons to feel guilty, so his exhortations to "forgive yourself" were useless. Father Gilles said things like that too during therapy, but in confession he became like someone else entirely, a quiet, listening presence that Joel could trust. He could pour out his self-hatred without provoking a silent, seething fight over who had the keys to reality.

 _You are forgiven._ Joel didn't even care who was forgiving him, God or the Church or even just Father Gilles himself. To be forgiven by anybody, to receive mercy, it made everything more bearable.

* * *

Now that he'd been given a clue, Joel could guess who'd been asking after him, so he wandered invisibly through the halls of St. Rita's until he found the culprit's room. It was early afternoon, personal time, and a few of the patients were out wandering the halls. Joel recognised only one or two faces, which seemed strange, considering that he had only been gone for a few months, mid-October to early January. For the two years he'd been there, very few patients got out. Once you were in, you were in. Nobody on "the outside" wanted to see them again, or so they would gloomily tell each other.

Paul, of course, was in his room, wired in to his headphones while he lay prone on his bed, tapping listlessly on his laptop. Their frail friendship had grown out of a mutual hatred of group, a shared addiction to gross cable news, and a certain overlap in their diagnoses. Paul was bipolar and liked to talk, but silence didn't bother him either. That was rare, and Joel liked him for it.

Joel didn't bother knocking, since Paul wouldn't have heard. He materialised in the room and said, "Hey Paul."

Paul jerked, pulling his earbuds out, and a flare of orange-and-green surprise flashed over his face. Paul had a rather useless mutation that caused bioluminescent displays in his skin, like the fires of an opal, changing with his emotional state and physical health. He glowed slightly in the dark and was necessarily a poor liar. "Jesus, McCree."

"Sorry."

"Yeah, you're always sorry. What the hell is that haircut? What are you doing here?"

"Appointment with Father Gilles."

"Really? Nobody informed _me_ ," Paul said with faux-pomposity, shutting his laptop lid. "That's cool, though. You're not back with him for good, right? Still with the Americans?"

"I don't know what I'm doing. I guess I'll go back to New York when break's over, I'm not registered for school anywhere else." Joel had been hoping that he would be able to live in the real world, as real as things got at home, but his mother was already making noises about sending him back to one institution or the other. "I've got about a billion credits to catch up on."

"I hear you. Grade nine math, it's a party." Paul leaned over and rapped his knuckles on a math textbook on the bedside table. "I've got a release date, though, did you know that? I'm out in March."

"Shit, really? Right in the middle of term?"

"Yeah, that's what I said. Social said it too, but Dr. Roy said no, two months minimum. I'm on new meds, is why. They're working, but you know...everybody wants to be sure."

"Right. Still, though." Joel thought that other guys his age would have high-fived or punched shoulders or something, but he wasn't sure. He settled for a smile. "That's cool, good for you."

They talked for a while about nothing in particular, and then Paul asked delicately about Joel's father. Joel said it wasn't as bad as he'd feared it would be.

"It's always there, but that makes it easier. If sometimes he were alive and sometimes he were dead, and I didn't know what would happen when, that would be worse. Like being sick, we don't know when we'll have a good day and we think we can do it all, and when we have months and months of...of nothing. Worse than nothing. But he's dead. The not knowing was worse, when they were holding him. At least this is real."

"I can't imagine," said Paul, a melancholy dark violet-blue feathering along his temples. "I hear the trial's been set for next year."

"Yeah."

"Someone was saying -- it was Mark, actually -- that he wished they'd bring back the death penalty for Marchand."

"They won't."

"Oh, they all know that. But everyone's upset."

"I don't want him to get the _death penalty_ , c'mon," said Joel. His stomach felt heavy. "I wish he'd never been born, but I don't want him dead. I'm not sure which is worse."

Paul shrugged, and changed the subject. "Have you heard anything about the First Minister's Conference?"

"What, inside information? Not really. I heard that Ramsay's drinking again, that's it."

"Yeah?"

"Vodka all day, that's what I heard. Putting it in his water bottle, the old John Turner cocktail."

Paul laughed. "Is he a nice drunk, can we scam some civil rights out of him that way? Will he be falling over mutants going _'I luh you guyyys...'_ "

"Oh, come on," Joel scoffed. "This won't even get to a referendum."

"McCree, yes it will. Everyone online's going nuts over this. Quebec news too." Paul was French, and both of them were bilingual; their conversations usually wound back and forth between English and French, switching when one of them got excited and spoke his first language without thinking. "It's no accident that the CFH hid there. I shouldn't have to tell you this stuff."

Joel rubbed the back of his neck. The hair hadn't grown back yet; he felt bare. The room was small, small and bare. A crucifix on the wall, over the door, featureless mass-produced wood and brass. Just the suggestion of a face but it was in pain. "You want to get out of here? D'you have privileges?"

"Yeah, they trust me."

They went to the desk and Paul signed out. The nurse on duty was a stranger and said nothing to Joel. As they left the gates and came out on sunny Fisher Avenue, Paul said, "A lot of people got sent out."

"Sent out?"

"Well, people like Berton got released. And Jean-Yves, and Chris Eligh. And me, for that matter."

Joel didn't see any connection between the names. None were especially hard cases. "So?"

"They're putting the mild cases out to make room, see? That's what we figure. Chris was doing okay, but he wasn't ready to go out. None of them were. We think the administration's triaging. They're expecting things to get worse, even with St. Christina's open."

"You sound paranoid."

Paul shook his head, although green agitation was creeping along the net of his veins like ivy. "You know from the beginning that people were put in here who weren't sick. To get rid of them. We were the only place that would take mutants, take them _away_ from the rest of the public. The Fathers took them because it was better than nothing. We always had enough beds for everyone, it didn't matter. Now they're running out of space, and they have to choose between the sick and the not-so-sick. They're choosing the sick, of course. The rest of us are on our own."

"That still doesn't mean some great apocalypse is near."

"Not _necessarily_ ," Paul allowed. "Still, man. First Ministers' Conference, that's serious shit. Do you actually like the sound of that?"

"Yeah, no, that's bullshit," Joel said.

"They shouldn't be going anywhere near the Constitution. Gay marriage happened without a Charter amendment, so why should mutants be any different?"

"Right, but sex-based discrimination was already in the Charter. We're not a category at all." They were coming up to Carling, and Paul's luminescent skin was attracting surreptitious stares, as it always did. "Do we need an amendment, no. Would it be nice to have one, if it was in our favour? Sure. It'd be good to have that protection in the Charter."

"Well, that's not happening. Alberta's threatening to use notwithstanding, like obviously." The notwithstanding clause, the Maginot line of the Constitution, could be invoked to suspend any part of it in a province for up to five years. "Talking about federal bullying. Quebec might do the same thing. Or Sherbrooke would spare them the indignity of begging and just start filling up the shopping cart."

Joel said, "The best that can happen is nothing. Dad always said that. Better nothing than something you can't undo."

"That sounds like the Liberal party, yeah."

"He also said nothing was permanent, in Parliament. You can always soften the blow."

They were walking by the Civic Hospital. Both Paul and Joel had done their time there, but it was a nice place, old red bricks rather than concrete, with a ribbon of parkland and pines on the other side of Carling, the faint gleam of greenhouse glass at the Experimental Farm. The statue of Harold Fisher stood in front of the hospital, something Joel had always loved. He loved all the statues in the city, the calm professionalism of the Peacekeepers, stodgy green Bishop Guigues, the prosaic John A. Macdonald holding his gloves, the winged Victory on the War Memorial. The giant spider _Maman_ in front of the National Gallery, both protective and eerie. Sir Galahad on Wellington, a statue that Joel had always thought was supposed to be Joan of Arc until one day he actually bothered to read the inscription. (He still preferred to think of it as Joan of Arc.) Friendly figures, a bit out of place in the city, a city that was always trying and failing to create its own mythology, only to be surprised when it realised how much real history it had accumulated in the meantime.

Fisher's statue was of the Bishop Guigues type, green and stodgy, but the pedestal's inscription was crisp: Mayor, 1917-1920. Erected by the Citizens of Ottawa. _"If you would see his monument, look around you."_

Paul noticed him looking and glanced up at the statue. "What'd he do, anyway? Other than be mayor?"

"He built the Civic, dude."

"I thought one of the Grey Nuns did that, Marguerite d'Youville or somebody."

That was about a hundred years off, but Joel followed Paul's logic. "You're thinking of Élisabeth Bruyère, _she_ was a Grey Nun. And I think she did found the Civic, but in those days the Civic was where the General is, or something like that. Anyway, Fisher had this campus built, right after the Spanish flu, and everyone said it was a dumb idea -- this area was all farmland back then. Fisher's Folly."

"Looks like he had the last laugh. It's a good inscription," Paul said. "For Ottawa, at least. They tried for some grandeur."

"Yeah." Joel wondered if his father might have a statue one day, if being murdered so publicly would elevate him from an ordinary politician into a symbol of something or other. A martyr, like the priest had said in the uncomfortable homily for Marin Leavitt. For some reason, Joel didn't like the idea. Too much like the waxwork body in the coffin, maybe. "They're not going to do anything to us, you know. Not here."

"They already have, Joel." Paul spoke in French, perhaps to take the edge off his words.

"Can't you tell the difference? Marchand committed a crime, he's going on trial. Nobody's celebrating what he did. The government won't turn on us now."

"Not officially," said Paul.

"Give it a rest, man."

"No, that whole thing was weird, okay? There's _always_ RCMP cars on the Hill. But when someone broke in they didn't do shit. Didn't even follow them across the fucking bridge."

Joel had had enough. "Can you hear yourself? You're talking about a police conspiracy to have my father murdered for the sake of keeping the mutant brothers down. Do you say stuff like this in front of Dr. Roy? And she still thinks you're ready for discharge? You're messed up, Paul."

Paul said nothing, and kept walking. Joel wanted to leave, but couldn't do it -- he knew he was implicitly supposed to keep an eye on Paul, and anyway you couldn't walk away from someone on the street. That only happened on TV. They turned at Holland Avenue.

Finally Paul said, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought that up."

"No, I'm sorry. That was way out of line on my end."

"It's okay." He glanced up at Joel quickly. "Did you mean that? You think I'm paranoid?"

Joel shook his head. "Just -- this still sounds so insane. I really don't think the police were involved, but like...they were weird around me? I guess? It seemed like they're looking to recruit mutants."

"Are you serious right now?" 

"No, it's a joke I made up. Yeah, this is for real. Would you do me a favour and tell the others, the ones getting released? Like, if the RCMP's asking _me_ about it, they obviously just want warm bodies. Not like I'd be a great crime-fighter."

Paul laughed. "Yeah, that's not the job for you. Zombie attack, throwing empty Ambien bottles at the evil-doers. Tell them about former mayors of Ottawa until they die of boredom."

They didn't talk about politics all the way back to St. Rita's. Joel promised to come back next week.

* * *

Joel got the idea a few days later, reading a book about Dorothy Day and half-listening to _Cross-Country Checkup_ on the radio. He felt as he had felt the day he took the overdose in Marin Leavitt's house -- not miserable, not suicidal, but rather as if something formerly impossible had just entered the realm of feasibility. _I actually could, I could do it..._ Like those dreams where you find new rooms in your house, new doors and hallways and balconies looking out onto different landscapes. Discovering hidden features of a space that he'd long ago dismissed as empty and boring. It was an idea that ran all through his body, the body he sometimes forgot he had. Every inch of skin was awake, every nerve was alive. _Yes_ , said this feeling, and that was all it said. _Yes._ How had he missed it before?

He didn't tell his mother. He didn't tell anyone, but he bought a few Montreal papers at Chapters, the _Gazette_ and _La Presse_ and _Le Devoir_ , and read through them carefully, looking at the classifieds and the city news. When he'd gone through those, he spent a few hours on Kijiji as well.

When Saturday came again, and his mother dropped him off at St. Rita's, Joel brought it up with Father Gilles. "How would you go about buying a house in Quebec?"

His dark eyebrows flew up and he repeated, "A house?"

"A big house, in Montreal."

Father scratched his cheek and squinted. "Downtown? Or out in the suburbs?"

"In the city, like the Plateau or NDG or someplace. I don't want to be all the way out in Laval or wherever -- someplace accessible by public transport from the city centre."

"All right. I never had to buy a house, being an Oblate, so I'm not sure I could tell you all the details. Religious life is handy that way. Why do you want a house in Montreal?"

Joel was tempted to say that it was an investment, somewhere to put that huge horrible inheritance, but instead he told the truth. "I want to have a safe house, for mutants."

Father Gilles seemed genuinely surprised, even shocked.

"I have over three million dollars. I turned eighteen at the end of December, so it's not in trust."

"That's right, I'd forgotten. Octave of Christmas baby." Father Gilles thought about it for a few moments. "Okay, so you can do it financially. Real estate's not cheap in the city itself, but if you've literally got millions to throw around, sure. Well -- I don't know what to say to this, actually. How will you run it?"

"Communally, I thought, like the Catholic Worker houses." It sounded stupid when he said it out loud. _Yeah, you're so great at doing things communally._ "I'd have to find people to help me."

"Exactly," said Father Gilles. "It's a very social existence. Not a lot of alone time, not a lot of privacy. I spent some time in a house of hospitality, before I joined the Oblates. It's tough on the shy people, the very sensitive. You're faced with a lot of suffering, a lot of need, and you often have to live cheek-by-jowl with real saints. Hard business, dealing with the saints. They can urge you on until you're burned out trying to keep up with them."

Joel couldn't explain the deep sense of rightness, the way the thought of it tenderised him, made him feel whole and alive. "But it's, it's doing something. I want to give something to people, you know? I never had the chance before, never had the energy. I could hardly think about it. But now I'm almost..."

"Joel--" Father Gilles stopped and put a hand to his eyes, rubbing them under his glasses, then continued. "You have a lot of gifts, you know. I could see you as an academic, maybe a lawyer like your father, maybe even an artist. You have a good mind, and a good heart. It's a very generous thought, wanting to do something like this. Not just everybody would think of it. But it's like someone with cancer wanting to run a marathon."

"Terry Fox did it."

"I walked right into that, didn't I? Look, I'm a psychiatrist, I'm not supposed to give advice, so I'll tell you this just as a friend: if you feel called to use the money to help the poor, give it to someplace that's established already. Give it to Benedict Labre House, if you specifically want to help Catholic Workers in Montreal. Keep some for your education. Your father would have been happy with that; he was a generous man too, and he helped us a lot here at St. Rita's. But don't--" He reached out for Joel's hand and folded it in his, a rare gesture. "Don't put another unrealistic expectation on your plate. I see you come in here and you're bent double with all the things you think you're supposed to be. You have to take it easy."

Joel thought about that for awhile, then made another sally. "It wouldn't be for another year or so. I have to get my high school. Maybe by then..."

Father Gilles was weakening. "Well..."

"But the market's good right now, isn't it? I read that. And a house is an investment. I'm planning to go to McGill anyway."

"You know what?" said Father Gilles, holding up a hand and leaning back in his swivel chair. "Don't wheedle to me. Wheedle God. What can I do, I don't even know how you buy a house. There are banks and lawyers, that's all I know. God's the one who can help you. Ask Him for the grace to do what you have to do. Whatever that is. And remember that sometimes the sacrifice God wants isn't the one you want to make. Ask St. Francis to pray for you, see if he can do you some favours. As your confessor, emphatically _not_ as your psychiatrist, that's my advice. Okay? Is that good enough?"

"Thank you, Father," said Joel.

* * *

On the 30th of January, the hastily-convened First Ministers' Conference ended with an agreement, the Gatineau Accord. The Premiers had bickered over the content of the proposed amendment until it was plumped full of regional sops and comfits. The papers lamented the unholy return from the dead of the Charlottetown Accord, with its ill-fated Canada Clause, and indeed Gatineau was full of talk about self-government and suspension of Charter rights for particular groups. They wanted to impose nothing on minority groups, while protecting the growing mutant minority. There were provisions for health care (specifically covering elective surgery for mutants under provincial health plans) which the _Citizen_ and the _National Post_ immediately denounced as absurd and beyond the scope of any federal document.

Most disturbing for Joel was a line that declared "mutants who present a clear danger to themselves or others" would not be given "certain legal and mobility rights". This line was in the health care section, so Joel presumed from the wording that it had been intended to allow authorities to commit mentally ill mutants. As it was, many psychiatric hospitals refused to take mutants, and there was a legal precedent for a different standard of incompetence for mutants as well. It wasn't a bad idea to buttress the law in that direction -- but a dangerously vague phrasing. A sloppy line, ripe for abuse, and outside federal jurisdiction to begin with.

As Trudeau would have said, a mess that deserves a big 'No'.

Joel didn't want to leave the country until after the referendum, but he knew that was just sentimentality. There was nothing he could do except cast his vote, and that could be done with an absentee ballot. He would buy his house no matter what anyone else thought, soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "John Turner cocktail" - John Turner was, very briefly, a Prime Minister. He had a wee drinking problem and was said to drink vodka in meetings while pretending it was water. This didn't go over so well in the television age as it did when Sir John A. Macdonald was PM.
> 
>  [The title.](http://www.amazon.ca/Trudeau-deserves-Trudeaus-historic-eleventh/dp/2890192504)


	14. Transference

_The heart is but a small vessel; and yet dragons and lions are there,_  
_and there poisonous creatures and all the treasures of wickedness;_  
_rough, uneven paths are there, and gaping chasms. There likewise is God,_  
_there are the angels, the heavenly cities and the treasures of grace;_  
_all things are there._  
—St. Macarius

It felt strange being back at the mansion. The other kids did not stare, very pointedly they did not stare. But they stole glances, looked over their shoulders, and whispered. They hadn't been expecting him to return, he knew. The suicide attempt alone had been embarrassing enough, but the crisis in Gatineau drew way too much attention for comfort. He wondered how much of the story they had heard, and after history class he got his answer.

Jubilee buttonholed him in the hall, getting close to him while he was spaced out and distracted, so that there was nowhere to retreat. "Hey..." she said with that familiar little funeral head-tilt, smiling encouragingly. "You're back."

"Yeah, uh...I am." _Brilliant response._ "Hi."

"How are you doing?" The same false earnestness as his parents' friends, who still cornered his mother every week at the grocery store and demanded to know how she was. Why should that bother him? _Because it's fucking fake._ But that didn't make sense either, really. Why couldn't he believe it was genuine?

"I'm all right. Thanks."

"Are you back for good?"

"This term, at least. I'm kinda...yeah." He decided not to get into a long explanation of his many missing high school credits. He wasn't sure if talking about it would have been boring or polite. Was that small talk?

"Well, good. I just wanted to say I'm so sorry about your dad."

What was the answer to that one? He'd forgotten. Thank you? Did that work? "Uh...thanks, thank you. It's okay."

Long, painful silence. _Actual conversation goes here. This space for rent._ He literally had his back to the wall, and he wished she'd back off a bit. He made a show of looking at his watch. "Sorry, I should go, I, uh –- I have to go to the washroom."

Well-played, McCree.

The mansion didn't have the right kind of washrooms for hiding, really, no blank stalls and fluorescent lights. But that wasn't going to stop him. In the powder room at the end of the hall, he sat down on the toilet and rubbed the back of his neck. His whole head felt numb, as if the skin were rubber, and a needle-like ache had bloomed behind his eyes.

How many times in his life had he pulled this? A lot. _Lot._ Especially before his manifestation. Then, when his powers appeared, his brain would rescue him from uncomfortable conversations automatically. Anxiety kicked him right into the white without his volition. Father Gilles and Dr. Xavier seemed to think it was deliberate, but it wasn't...or at least it wasn't deliberate back then. Now he knew too much, had too much control –- and he didn't want to start disappearing on purpose just to get out of an awkward moment. That was really goddamn rude. Now disappearing was guaranteed to look like a snub, rather than a terrified retreat. 

Hence the old bathroom trick, his trademark. In high school he had told his teachers that he had a bladder condition, or rather he had brought in a forged note from his mother to that effect. They believed him; Joel was always the sort of kid they would believe. And he was the sort of kid who would have bladder problems, more importantly.

The powder room was papered in yellow, an old-fashioned pattern with farmhouses and shepherdesses, willow trees and wagons. The Professor would not have toilet stalls in his own house, and Joel couldn't blame him. You had to do everything in this world to preserve your humanity, to live like an individual and not like a number or a victim. At St. Rita's, kids had scraped messages into the bathroom stalls (with nails or claws or teeth, he supposed, since nothing else was allowed). _We are broken. We don't fit. In order for one to succeed others must fail._

And at the bottom of the battered door, in a different hand, someone else had written, _Have faith._ That was always the last thing Joel read before forcing himself to leave, before giving himself up into custody. 

_Have faith._ His father used to say "Fortune favours the bold," before making difficult phone calls or deciding on tricky questions. It was a line from Vergil. Joel had ten minutes before his session with Dr Xavier, and someone was knocking gently on the door.

* * *

Of course, the Professor immediately had to set him straight about Jubilee. "I'm sure she didn't mean anything by it. She's an orphan herself, you know."

"Oh shit," said Joel. It made perfect sense, and now the blackness was surfacing, that thick prickly darkness that had left him alone for weeks. He wanted to hit himself. "Oh Jesus, I didn't know that."

"No, you didn't. You aren't really...in the loop, at least regarding the other students."

"I'm such a..." Words failed him. He glanced up and saw a look of pain on the Professor's face, and realised that he wasn't shielding himself very well. "Sorry."

"It's all right," said Dr. Xavier, but he didn't sound convincing. Joel let the Aphanes cover his thoughts, and the sounds of birds outside stopped, the details of the Professor's fine furniture became fuzzy. Insulation. It was comforting.

The Professor's shoulders relaxed a bit, and he said, "But you've been doing better, haven't you? While you were at home. I wonder if home might not be the better place for you now."

"It's not." That came out before he could analyse it. "I mean, it's not comfortable at home. At the house. But being in Ottawa...I've been spending time with Father Gilles, and Paul. It was helping."

"Paul?"

"My friend, at St. Rita's. My only friend, I guess. I didn't think we were that close –- well, we weren't, really. But he's getting better, and I'm getting better. We both know what things were like in there, we've both seen each other huddled on the floor crying and screaming, you know...so we're not scared of each other."

"Hmm." The Professor steepled his fingers. "What sort of mutant is he?"

"Um, physical. He changes colours." Joel smiled, remembering one of the nurses' jokes. It never amused either of them at the time, but now Paul didn't find it so offensive. "He's a human mood ring."

Dr Xavier took a moment to work that out. "Like a chameleon, perhaps?"

"I don't think he can do patterns. Just streams of colour and light. It's very -- it's pretty."

"Fascinating. And you talk with him."

"Yeah." It wasn't always talk; sometimes they merely went out and sat in the courtyard, or took a bus downtown to wandered through the streets. Paul, as much as he liked excitement and conspiracies, radiated a stillness that Joel loved. The silences were radiant, they smelled of fresh-cut grass and soft air off the Rideau. Silence born of contentment. It was a strange feeling, and Joel liked it.

"And you talk with Father Gilles."

"I was down to once a week."

"Joel--" The Professor abruptly wheeled around and hummed over to the desk. "Your mother was adamantly insisting on the phone that you still needed institutional care, and you yourself said you wanted to come back. But my opinion is that you would very likely be better off returning to Ottawa. You have support structures, a friendship with someone your own age, the presence of family--"

"No!" This too burst out before he could hold back. It came out way too loud. He felt like he'd been socked in the gut.

Dr. Xavier looked up, astonished. "Why not?"

"Why _not?_ How could you do this?" He was back in Father Gilles' office, listening dully to the pitch, hearing the explanation: _I just don't feel I can make any more progress with you. That we can make any more progress together._ Or before, his parents looking at the pamphlets from St. Rita's at the kitchen table, telling him, _You need to be in a safe place._

"Joel, of course it's up to you. This is only a suggestion, not an order. But I'm trying to limit how much your life gets rearranged. Being divided between two cities that are hundreds of miles apart is not convenient for anyone. You clearly do better when you're at home, when you have someone to talk to, and I daresay when you're in your own country. And Dr. Visineau can offer you spiritual support as well, which is just as important. This is for your benefit."

_"I trusted you!"_ The whiteness was sucking at him, but he fought it, tried to claw back to reality. It hurt, and as his flesh re-materialised he was shaking, felt feverish and swollen. "You said you wouldn't, you said--"

He wanted to get up and leave, to throw something, break a window, smash his own skull open, but instead he felt a gentle, calming hand press down over his mind, like a handkerchief soaked in chloroform. "Leave my brain alone," he said, some of the colour drained from his voice.

"All right. I just didn't want you to get violent." The calming sensation went away. Fuck him, anyway. Fuck him, fuck him, Xavier who was just sitting there looking _interested_. Joel wanted to kill him, but he couldn't think thoughts like that for very long, too aware of his own impotence. There was nothing he could do. His brain felt poisonous, irrational. Xavier could go to hell -- yeah, literally to hell, first class ticket to hang out with Brutus and Judas Iscariot. Fucking traitor. And he was just sitting there watching ( _watching and probably listening to every word of this_ ) with his head tilted, like he was looking at an abstract sculpture, like he was listening to a lecture on Kierkegaard.

And he was a little afraid, Joel realised. A paralysed old man in the room with a furious eighteen-year-old, no matter what the real differences in power. 

But it didn't matter, it didn't matter. "I'm nothing to you, I was never anything. Was I? You couldn't be the one to fix the problem so you don't want me around anymore. You're giving up like everyone else just because I can't -- can't..."

"Can't what?"

"Just leave me alone, fucking _leave me alone._ " He hadn't yelled so much in his life, except in dreams, except years ago at school pounding on the door when they shut him in a closet. Since he was a child. Never like this, never in an argument. "You don't care, so just leave me alone. You're just like the others, I shouldn't have said anything. Just make the call, send me home. It doesn't matter."

"I already said it's up to you, Joel," said the Professor, still quiet. "I would never force a decision on you that you weren't happy with. Why are you so angry?"

"You know why I'm angry." He got up and went over to the window, too restless to stay in his chair. If he went towards the door he was sure the Professor would stop him, but this was evidently allowed.

"I want you to tell me."

"I've been talking to you since December, ever since the ice. You had your chance. You just never gave enough of a _shit_ to put it together, because it was easier to blame me. It's my fault, I'm not doing enough, I'm not cooperating. And now this passive-aggressive bullshit just because I had the gall to start doing a little better with Father Gilles. Fuck you."

The Professor sighed. "Well...yes, if you want to know the truth, there's some truth to that. But not all of it, Joel. I want you to believe me when I say that I am invested in this, I do care."

"So which part is right?"

A silence. Then: "I do have some competitive feelings with regard to Dr. Visineau. I'm willing to admit that. Part of my...I did want to outdo him. It was gratifying when he referred you to me. I wanted to succeed where he had failed. Yes."

Every cell in Joel's body was drifting away from its neighbour. He was disintegrating in a sweep of cold, except this time he was staying solid. He was too angry to disappear. He dug his fingernails into the back of his hand. "I knew it. I was right, I knew it."

"But Joel, that doesn't mean I never wanted the best for you, that I never felt compassion for you. Quite the opposite." He sounded almost pleading. "How could I stay so detached? I've been inside your mind."

Joel rested his forehead against the glass. "So why are you getting rid of me?"

"I am _not_ getting rid of you. All I did was suggest that you may be ready to live without constant psychiatric supervision. Most people would be happy to hear that."

"Obviously I'm just doing great, yeah. Going like gangbusters."

"True, I wasn't counting on this reaction." He sounded almost amused, and Joel hated him again. "You're still far from well, but can't you understand that the worst is over, that you can leave the Intensive Care Unit now?"

There were tears running down Joel's cheeks, had been for some time. "You still don't get it."

"What don't I get? Explain it to me."

"Okay," said Joel. He wiped his face. "I'm nothing, nothing but an intellectual exercise to you, but you can't figure it out and you're sick of failing, and you want to move on. Father Gilles did the same thing. My father did the same thing. Obviously I'm asking for this kind of treatment somehow. I can't connect, I can't get it together. I'm sealed up in scar tissue, I'm..."

_You should do it_ , his brain was saying. _You should_. The sheer horror of those thoughts, their familiarity, was like being mugged and then seeing your attacker in the street, years later. "Listen," he added, voice shaking, "I'm having a meltdown here, can you give me something? I just...want something that'll keep me from cutting my throat."

He turned around. The Professor, still positioned by the desk, was staring down at this hands. "All right. I'll call Henry. It will be at least half an hour. You'll stay here." His voice was subdued.

He used the school intercom, rather than telepathy, and when the phone rang he wheeled away with the receiver, speaking in an undertone, in brief sentences. After he hung up, he sighed again. "Will you talk to me, while we're waiting?"

"I don't know what there is to say."

"Tell me about your father. You said he was like Dr. Visineau and myself. How so?"

"He wanted me to get better and if I couldn't do that, he wanted me out of his sight. That's how."

"Why? How did you come to that conclusion?"

"Look, my father--" Joel suddenly felt like the air in the room was too thick, or too thin. It hurt to inhale. "What he wanted was...the worst thing is how I came so close to being the kind of son he wanted. So close. He didn't have horrible demands, you know, they weren't high expectations. He wanted a son who was good in school, maybe not popular or athletic, but smart, a decent kid. And, you know, _functional._ I can still feel that other kid in the house, that's why I didn't want to stay there. I could have been that other kid. But I got sick, and that kid died, I got sick, I got sick..."

The tears choked him for a long time. He couldn't speak, although he tried; his voice only made incoherent croaks, and he couldn't finish his sentences. "I wanted, I wanted to, but...when I got sick, I realised. Before I just thought he loved me, that I was his son, there was nothing to it. But I got sick and then it wasn't the same anymore, so then I knew that he just wanted..."

The Professor made an almost inaudible sound, a sound of pity, and Joel didn't want to hear it. The emptiness inside him suddenly unfurled into a cloudburst of panicked grief, of horror at what had happened to his family. "My father's gone, oh my God, my father, my father..."

"You miss him."

"I miss him, I want him to, I want him to..."

"I know."

"He loved me but, Christ, I can't say any more. My father. I miss him."

Impossible, impassable pain, too thick to breathe through. The image came back to him again of being in a small craft alongside a huge ship on the sea, something too big to see him, something that would capsize his boat in its wake and never notice. Grief was simply too big to understand, the impossibility of a person just being gone. It was dangerous to get too close to a force like that. But the tears receded, leaving him with sore stomach muscles, salt drying on his face.

The Professor handed him a Kleenex. "I read somewhere that -- in a study -- they found that when a therapist hands a patient a tissue, the patient takes it as a cue to stop crying. I don't know if that's true, but you certainly don't have to stop. Tears are healthy. This kind, at any rate."

"I think I'm..." He welled up again. "No."

"That's all right. Go ahead and cry, son, you've earned it. You've been holding this in for a long time, haven't you?"

"I'm having a meltdown."

"Of course you are. I had no idea that you would be so hurt, but it makes sense now that you've explained it. I understand."

"He did love me," Joel insisted, half of his mind still in the previous conversation. He felt disloyal, like a whiny teenager. Which he was, really. "He didn't mean to."

"I think you're right. When I was in your father's mind, using Cerebro, I sensed a great deal of love for you and your mother. He hated the fact that you were in so much pain."

Joel's face was wet again, the tissue too damp to be useful. "I'm such a piece of shit."

"Why?"

"To be tearing him apart like this."

"Anger," said Dr. Xavier, "is morally neutral. I don't know for certain, but I expect your Father Gilles would say the same thing. You are not acting on that anger, only expressing it. Expressing it safely, in an appropriate and supportive environment. You're not hurting anyone. And you are not to blame for your emotions."

"But I shouldn't _be_ angry when he didn't mean to do anything wrong. Didn't mean –- he _didn't_ do anything wrong. I just...I got hurt over nothing."

"Anger isn't so rational as that. It's not a court of law, where you have to prove you were wronged with malice aforethought. You can just be angry. Or hurt." The Professor paused. "Sometimes it's harder, when nobody means you any harm. When you have someone to blame -- like you have Henri-Michel Marchand -- it's easier, isn't it? But when it's muddy, when it's all accidents and misunderstandings, how do you make sense of that?"

"No one wants to say that I'm to blame for some of this," Joel said. "Like they don't say it out loud, but I know they're thinking it."

"What do I tell you every week, Joel? You are not a..."

"I'm not a telepath," he filled in obediently.

"One day you'll remember to say it to yourself." Dr. Xavier smiled for a moment, then it faded. "Perhaps some people in your life do blame you, yes. I wouldn't know, and neither would you, but that might well be what they think. Is it really necessary to let that opinion affect you so much? When it may or may not even exist?"

"Am I allowed to be upset about it if _I_ think I'm to blame too?" Joel said.

"Do you?"

"Yeah. Sometimes."

"All right, let's assume the worst, then. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you knowingly and deliberately made your illness worse. Isn't it possible to forgive yourself for that? Don't you think you've suffered enough, if that's true?"

"No," said Joel, and suddenly he felt the need to make a gesture. He got up and knelt next to the Professor's chair. He needed it to come from outside himself, and he needed it from the Professor. "You forgive me."

Dr. Xavier's sharp hazel eyes searched his face, and he rested the heel of his hand on Joel's forehead. A wash of images: the Roloff Beny book open to the picture of Bishop Laval's tomb; his father with the curved knife cleaning the pike; the white card falling to the floor in the room at St. Rita's.

And they were in the heart, a rotten core, the dry chewed-up centre from which the insects burrowed out. The courthouse, the dock where the accused stood. Charles Xavier's presence seemed to smile. _Consider yourself pardoned._

The pressure of the connection eased, and they were back in the office. Dr. Xavier brushed his hand over the top of Joel's head, held it there for a moment like a priest, then let him go. "I wish I had known sooner, that what you wanted was so simple."

"It isn't simple," said Joel.

Dr. Xavier looked at him for a moment, then nodded. "You're right. It's not."

There was a knock at the door, and Hank entered, with a Dixie cup and a glass of water. "Am I interrupting?"

Joel shook his head; evidently it was up to him.

Hank gave him the pill, a small white one printed with LILLY. "Zyprexa, very small dose. You've had it before, of course -- you'll be sawing logs for a long time, but your equilibrium should be improved a bit when you wake up."

"I know. Thank you." Joel swallowed the pill. He didn't need water with them anymore, well-practiced at swallowing them dry, but he drank the water anyway, feeling like he'd been bled.

Hank walked him to his room, past the other kids who were going to class and giggling with each other. Jubilee passed by, and Joel attempted a _sorry I was weird_ smile, but he knew it probably looked wan. _Who's doing fake smiles now?_

"I'm already tired," he said at the door to his room. "It hasn't even been twenty minutes yet -- isn't it always twenty minutes?"

"Most medications taken by mouth start to have their effect once they've been processed by the kidneys, which is usually somewhere in the twenty-minute range, yes," said Hank. "But the more mundane explanation is that emotional outbursts take it out of you. You need rest. As Jonathan Swift said, the best doctors in the world are Doctor Quiet, Doctor Diet, and Doctor Merryman. He was chronically ill himself, you know, with Meniere's -- just lie down, Joel." And Hank took off Joel's shoes for him, with no awkwardness at all, ignoring the mumbled apologies. Something was pinning Joel down to the bed and he couldn't get up. Hank drew the blinds and turned the light off, leaving him in dove-grey darkness. He fell asleep immediately.

* * *

Joel awoke in the same grey dimness, nineteen hours later. It was raining outside, the dripping silver rain of a thaw, which made him happy. Perhaps not _happy_ –- he wasn't sure anymore what he meant by the word –- but his stomach relaxed and his breath came easily. He felt that way sitting in Chapters with Paul on their afternoons, reading magazines that he had no intention of buying and looking over Paul's shoulder at the heavy books on hockey and opera. _Everything in its right place._ Funny that it was such a physical feeling, settled in his shoulders and his guts.

He remembered when he had started loving the rain. Back in high school, he would only skip on rainy days, an arbitrary rule that kept him from skipping all the time. He would leave after homeform, take a 95 bus to Metcalfe and spend the day in the city library, or get off at Mackenzie King and walk up to the National Gallery. That was in the days when the permanent collection was free to visit, when he could hide for hours in the basement with the intricate Inuit carvings, semi-darkness and a recorded voice chanting in Inuktitut in the next room.

And even then he used to tense up when an old woman wandered in with headphones on, when a crowd of giggling children came in with a teacher, when he thought the security guards recognised him. But he put up with it for the sake of the clean and perfect silence there, broken only by the sounds of distant footsteps and the recorded voice of the Inuit chanting, and the drum that accompanied him.

Those days would not come back again.

"I've lost so much time," he said to the Professor during their therapy session that morning. "Nineteen hours here, two years in an institution there. I'm never getting that back."

"How do you feel about that?"

Joel was half-invisible, sometimes letting himself disappear entirely. He was still so tired that if he stayed physical too long he was afraid he would fall asleep. "Nervous. Like I have to get going."

"Get going on what? Or to what? _Quo vadis?"_

"Get going in general. Finish school, like that." Joel was reluctant to talk about his project, since Father Gilles had been so discouraging, but maybe the Professor -- more idealistic on the whole than the priest -- would feel differently. "And I want to buy a house in Montreal, for mutants."

Dr. Xavier repeated, "For mutants."

"Like the Catholic Worker houses. Um, if you know what that is. The Catholic Worker movement is about directly serving people on the margins, and the houses are free shelters. Anyone can come and live and work there."

"I see." The Professor blinked. "That's quite an ambition."

"You can say it. Father Gilles thought it was stupid."

"I don't think it's stupid. I think it's very generous, and very brave. Or am I embarrassing you now?"

"Yes."

"It seems to bother you less when people say cruel things than when they say the opposite."

"I don't like being patronised, that's all."

"So it's out of the question that you might deserve a compliment sometimes?"

"That's right."

"You're smiling, so you know how illogical that is. That's good. No, I don't think it's a stupid idea at all. What concerns me..."

"Uh."

The Professor looked up at him, eyebrows raised. Joel lowered his eyes. "Sorry. There's always a 'what concerns me.'"

Dr. Xavier sat back in his chair, rolling his Montblanc pen between his thumb and forefinger. After a few moments, he said, "I notice that we aren't talking about the things you said yesterday."

Joel suddenly felt like the bottom of his spine had been plunged into ice water. "I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to be sorry about. I just think we should talk about that, and then come back to this question about the future." He smiled, reassuring. "One thing that struck me, after you had left, was that...how can I put this...? The boundaries between personal and professional relationships are rather porous for you."

Joel waited for the explanation, although he had an inkling of what was coming. He'd been too clingy, of course.

"As your therapist -- I don't want you to take this as a rejection -- my job is not to be your father. Or your brother or your uncle, or your mother either, for that matter. I'm much more like a teacher. It is a professional relationship, and it will come to an end eventually. You see the difference?"

Joel nodded. Part of his brain was screaming the usual things ( _you stupid shit he thinks you're needy he thinks you're a stalker and you will never, you will never -- oh you shouldn't have said anything, you should not have said a single word_ ). The effects of the Zyprexa still held that voice back, though, bound in clamps and rubber tubing, while the rest of his mind listened in relative serenity, unblinking and dim like a security light in a stairwell.

"It's quite normal to unconsciously 'cast' the therapist as someone with whom you have a difficult relationship. In Freudian analysis this is even expected. But I want to make sure that you understand that when our therapeutic relationship comes to an end, it will not be -- it won't be your _fault._ It isn't a rejection or an abandonment."

"I know that."

"Consciously, of course you do. But yesterday you made it very clear to me that you've been deeply hurt by how your parents have reacted to your illness."

"They did their best." Joel wished he could muster up more conviction, but he was exhausted. "And they did a lot better than other people have. Half of Paul's family won't talk to him."

"That's true, but Paul has his own story. You have yours. You said you believed that your father loved you, but then _you got sick and it wasn't the same anymore._ A realisation like that..."

"I wasn't being fair to him."

"Be fair to yourself. Be faithful to what you feel." The Professor paused. "I can see that you want to get past this, to get on with your life. But listen to me. You _won't_ , unless you confront this."

Joel suddenly realised what was happening. "You think this is it, don't you? You think this is the answer to the big riddle?"

Dr. Xavier said nothing.

"You do."

"I'm trying my best not to put words in your mouth. Perhaps," said the Professor, beginning to sound annoyed, "if you gave me more to work with, I could discern the complexities and nuances better."

"You've been in my head."

"And I saw nothing there to contradict my current opinion, which is that you're a very disturbed boy with self-esteem issues that were badly exacerbated by the insensitivity of your father. Which is understandable--"

"You really don't like me, do you?" It was liberating, somehow, to say this out loud. Maybe just because it let him feel self-righteous for a few seconds. "You never have."

"Joel, I'm not going to play games."

"I don't play games." He wasn't angry, like yesterday. Rather, he felt a Buddha-like equanimity. "Isn't that what you figured out, yesterday? I know you were going through me looking for evidence that I was doing all this deliberately. You always thought that suicide note was some kind of big clue, I remember that. And you didn't find any proof of that, but it's still the easiest explanation."

"Joel." Dr Xavier spoke sharply.

"Like, that's it, right? That's why you tell yourself you can't cure me –- _the patient is resisting therapy!_ I know that one. Or that I'm already cured and you can send me home."

The Professor turned his chair and wheeled over to the window. He said, "You know, you spend so much time telling me how much I dislike you, and you might find it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't dislike you. That is the truth, and you can believe it or not as you please. What I dislike is the way you pick at people's weaknesses, as if nothing but perfection in thought, word, and deed is good enough for you."

Joel hadn't heard that one before. He listened, transfixed. Without the Zyprexa, he would have shut down completely by now, but he was still sedated enough to just be interested, rather than hurt. He wondered if he could get a scrip for a regular dosage of Zyprexa, or if they would have the zombie/cow debate again.

"I confided in you," said Dr Xavier, staring out the window. "Telling you that I had my own reasons for taking your case -- perhaps it was a mistake. Unprofessional. But you're fully aware that I'm a little ashamed of how I feel about Dr. Visineau. Do you see what I'm saying? You demand ruthless honesty and then when I'm honest, you use it against me. The same with your father. When he treated you well, you thought it was a façade, and when he broke down and revealed his limitations, you judged him for that too. I don't know when or how that pattern started, and I think I'll give up the search, since you seem to find it so insulting. Maybe you're right, and knowing where the pattern started wouldn't tell us anything. But no one will ever love you perfectly. No one. Unconditionally, perhaps, but not perfectly."

Joel sat for awhile in astonished silence. What amazed him, more than Dr Xavier's words, was the fact that they had not destroyed him. Some mysterious tenderness, in fact, opened its petals inside him, and he felt –- he didn't have words for how he felt. 

He drifted back to physical presence, and said, "Can I have -- I kinda want to write that down."

The Professor stared at him for a moment, then turned over a new page on his legal pad, and clicked his fine pen. He wrote, and when he had finished, he handed it over. Joel unfolded it and read,

_You are loved with all the purity that a flawed heart can muster.  
Don't take it too hard._

Joel folded it again, unfolded it, and gave Dr. Xavier a slow smile. "Nobody ever told me this."

The Professor shook his head. "Because it's a terrible thing to say to a patient with your problems. I've been completely unprofessional. If you weren't so sedated right now..."

"No, I mean it." Joel read the note again, and looked up to meet the Professor's eyes. "I'm sorry. I mean I really am, this time. This time I was really listening."

"Apology accepted."


	15. Stendhal Syndrome

_Keep your ears open to the promptings of your destiny_  
_and don't worry too much if you and your destiny do not agree_  
_about what you should have, and when you should have it._  
_Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament,_  
_and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something_  
_that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had_  
_better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck_  
_from your own brand of unhappiness._  
—Robertson Davies

Joel had marked the date on the calendar, and he wasn't going to weasel out of it. It was a Friday in March, after seven. His mother's school never held meetings on Friday nights, and dinner would be over by now.

She wasn't eating dinner by herself in that big house, was she? Amanda's replacement would be there, of course. Maybe Aunt Carmel and Nana would come over, and all the other relations. Still. Eating alone seemed worse, somehow, even than sleeping alone. Coming home to an empty house, because your husband was murdered and your son is insane and your assistant sold you out to terrorists...but she probably didn't think of it that way. You couldn't, not all the time. Her husband died, her son was away at school, her assistant had been fired. The phrasing was everything.

Focus. Joel was sitting on the edge of the bed, his phone in his lap. Not comfortable. He slid down onto the floor. He used to do this at St. Rita's, searching for a position that felt safe. On the floor where it was cool, back to the wall, the door visible.

He was not quite present, and he forced himself out of the Aphanes until he could feel every bristle of the carpet against his bare feet, hear every murmur coming from the other rooms in the mansion. "Being invisible is a reaction to fear," the Professor said. "Stop the reaction, and the fear will ease. With any patient who suffers from anxiety, we tell them to change their posture, change their breathing. In your case, you also need to stay physical. Accept that you will be uncomfortable."

Joel's mother had sent him a calling card to cover the long distance charges (and as a none-too-subtle reminder to phone home), so he dialled the calling card number slowly, the numbers peeping quietly under his thumb, and listened to the entire list of recorded instructions before entering his PIN, stalling for time.

The phone rang. On the second ring, his mother picked up. "Hello?"

"It's me."

Then the usual searching questions. "How are you doing?" and "Are you eating?" and "How's your schoolwork?" Fine, Joel answered to all of these.

It was one _fine_ too many. "'Fine' doesn't fill me with confidence anymore, Joel. Are you sleeping?"

"Yeah, nine hours a night."

"You don't have to get snippy."

"I'm not snippy. I'm just..." He caught himself, and curled his fist around a handful of bedclothes. "I'm sorry. I feel guilty when you worry, and I don't like feeling guilty, so I get mad."

"Sweetheart, you don't have to feel guilty." That sound of _confusion_ was the hardest to take. "But I don't know how else to find out what's going on with you."

"I really am doing better."

"That's good."

"Look, I called because I'm coming up for the weekend in April. The vote's on the Thursday before, right? So I'll do that and then I'll go down to Montreal for a day to see Paul. And, uh, to look at some real estate."

_"Real estate?"_

Joel explained it, keeping his voice neutral. "Places like St. Rita's just aren't big enough, they're straining. Mutants need somewhere to go if they can't live at home, and they shouldn't be forced into mental institutions or homeless shelters. I want to have a house. Not a school, like Xavier's, or a hospital like St. Rita's, or a shelter like all the others in the cities. Just a house where a few people can live like human beings. A house of hospitality."

His mother took some time to digest that.

"I've talked to Father Gilles and Dr. Xavier about it," Joel said, hoping to reassure her.

"And they think it's a good idea?"

"Dr. Xavier does. Father Gilles was more cautious. He says I need to discern."

"Uh-huh."

"And I am discerning."

His mother was silent for a few seconds. "Do you really think your judgement on something like that is going to be sound right now?"

"There's nothing wrong with my judgement," said Joel, his neutral tone slipping. "I'm not psychotic or suicidal or malnourished or drugged up or anything else. I'm finally getting my head together, and this is what I want to do with my life."

"You're still grieving," she said quietly.

His throat blocked up suddenly, and he took a few moments before saying, "I'm not going to pretend that Dad has nothing to do with this, but that doesn't make it a bad idea. I want to make him proud. There's nothing wrong with that."

"Joel. He _was_ proud of you."

"For what?" He was genuinely curious; he couldn't think of anything he'd done to inspire paternal pride.

She snorted. "For what. You're eighteen years old, no one was expecting you to be sitting on the Supreme Court by now. We're proud of you because you're a smart kid with a good heart. That's enough."

Joel wanted to argue, to dig until he got her to admit they'd been disappointed about spending their last five years in hospitals, disappointed that their beloved son had attempted suicide in public, disappointed that he never brought girls home and never graduated on time. And probably those things were there, folded away somewhere in her heart like the sorrows of the Virgin. But he remembered the Professor's words, and told himself, _Don't take it too hard._ Forgiveness is a choice, Father Gilles always said. A choice, not a feeling. Faith was a choice too.

"Okay," he said, because it was the only response he could think of.

"You know we're just worried. I'm worried. You know we wouldn't stop you from doing whatever it is you're called to do. Your vocation. Don't you know that?"

"I know," said Joel. Half of him meant it; the other half was listening to the voice in his head. _More stupid psychobabble lies because she feels sorry for you and you always have to suck them dry, you spoiled brat, spoiled rotten, rotting away piece by piece._ Half was better than nothing.

But then his mother said, "Well, Carmel will have to teach you to cook this summer, if you're going to be running a house. I'm no good at it, but you'll have to be."

And if Aunt Carmel was involved, then it was on.

* * *

Over the next few weeks, Joel started edging quietly out of his room. He didn't exactly join in the conversations of the other mansion kids, and he certainly didn't do anything with them, but he brought his books down to the common room to read, and left his door open occasionally. One night in the common room, as Piotr Rasputin sat engrossed in the Red Wings-Canadiens game, Joel quietly slipped the marker back into his copy of _Notes from the House of the Dead_ and came to sit down on the couch next to him. Piotr wasn't a big talker either, so they limited themselves to brief exchanges about eye injuries and retiring players.

"You ever play?" Piotr asked once, idly, during commercials.

"A little, when I was a kid. Defence. I'm too slow to be any good."

"That was my problem too." Piotr grinned. "I could take a hit pretty well, though."

"Goalie?"

"Yeah. Good guess, most people think I must've been a big enforcer type."

"Nah, makes sense to me. Goalies are different." They were a certain personality type, self-contained and quirky. "You're tall, though, that's a pretty big five-hole."

"I never said I was a good goalie. Too bad we can't flood the basketball court in the winter. Maybe the Professor would let us have a rink somewhere else. Bobby could be our Zamboni machine."

"He must play."

"I think he did, back in Boston. We could round up a few guys, maybe even a girl or two. It's a fun game when you don't have to be good."

The game came back on, and Joel sat quietly amazed at how easy, how miraculously painless, a short conversation could be. _I'm all right. I'm all right._ You would never know there was anything wrong with him. Two teenagers on a couch in New York watching Detroit at Montreal and eating Doritos.

The early spring darkness behind the reflections in the window reminded him of an odd fragment of memory, something unimportant that he thought he had forgotten: a night in winter several years ago, when he and his cousins were watching the Olympics at Aunt Carmel's house while the adults downstairs played euchre over coffee. Joel had felt safe, uncommonly safe, but at the same time it was like falling into the Aphanes — he was separate, not really there. It was before his manifestation, but after the seizures had started.

As his two younger cousins started a foot-fight on the couch and Robin argued with Brendan about city planning and transport, Joel saw the house, the streets of the Glebe, the whole city, every city fade to nothing. There was only the darkness in the trees, the sound of the wind, the snow everywhere -- falling softly on Tunney's Pasture, falling on the Gatineau hills, swallowed in the tamed black rapids of the Ottawa River, and drifting over the first bald mountains of the Canadian Shield. But there would be no more names, no more names for anything on the map. No lines, no borders, no words, no thought. Nothing but the silent passage overhead of the great grey clouds that travelled invisibly in the darkness until, in the clearing of the moon, they broke into the light. Pale grey light that was no light. He was bodiless and mindless, yet he could hear the boughs of the dark pines moaning and creaking in the wind, and there was nothing else. In this silence, he was certain that he knew something inordinately precious, that if he could only...

A noise from the television had startled him -- the crowd in Vancouver made a sudden wail of mourning and the O'Brien brothers in Ottawa answered, Brendan going so far as to kick the coffee table. From downstairs, Aunt Grace had shouted, "What's going on up there?"

Then, as now, the shock as he fell back into his body was severe. Detroit's centre slipped a cupcake across the ice and into the hands of Montreal's left wing man, and Piotr groaned and flopped back on the couch, making the frame squeal along with the springs. "That stupid fuck."

Bobby wandered in from the kitchen, a glass of milk in his hand. "You're going to break the springs if you bounce around on it like that."

"Thanks, Mom. And you're not supposed to bring food to your room."

"So?"

Piotr snorted. "Exactly."

"Was that some grand ironic statement on the futility of rule-making, or what?" Bobby sat on the arm of the La-Z-Boy and drank his milk noisily. "Maybe I won't go to my room, smart guy. Who's winning?"

Then he glanced down at Joel, who was leaning forward in a sudden sweat. "Are you okay?"

Joel's brain was making a buzzing sound, like a telephone's dial tone. He knew that feeling, and managed to whisper, "I'm going to have a seizure."

The dial tone became louder, and there were other sounds in it, like a swarm of bees. He remembered some legendary Irish saint who'd kept bees, and when he left on a ship the bees followed him and settled on the mast. The buzzing got louder and louder; Piotr and Bobby were moving him, trying to lay him out on the couch, getting more panicky than they had to, but the bees were too loud for him to apologise or explain.

 

The milk in the glass was now gone, a white film remaining. The television was black and silent. He didn't recognise the room, although he remembered the milk glass. Someone else's house. Aunt Carmel's? No, the Professor's.

Joel pulled himself up on his elbows; someone had tucked the couch's red plaid blanket around his feet. Joel's father always used to call blankets like that _motor rugs_ , just like he always had to call a sofa a _chesterfield_. But this was New York, so it was definitely not a chesterfield. 

Piotr checked the time on his phone and exhaled in relief. "We were about to call Dr. McCoy again."

"What time is it?"

"It's just been like twenty minutes, it's okay," said Bobby. "You were only shaking for two minutes, Pete timed it. We called Dr. McCoy and he said two minutes wasn't anything to worry about, unless it started again. He said you might just go straight to sleep like that. But then neither of us were sure if we should wake you up or not. I think they told us to do it in health class once, but Pete said no, so we figured we'd wait."

"Jesus. Thanks. And yeah, you don't need to bother waking me up, if it happens again." Which, he realised, it would. "You didn't have to wait up with me, either. But thanks."

"Was it the TV?" Piotr asked.

"No, light doesn't do it. I don't know what triggers them, but it's not light or flickering or anything. I thought I wasn't going to have any more, after my manifestation. That's what Dr McCoy said, anyway."

"Dr McCoy was _wrong?"_ Bobby grinned. "Oh my God, let me alert the media..."

"C'mon, I'll walk you to your room," said Piotr, picking up Joel's book and straightening the motor rug on the couch.

They took the elevator. Joel had to ask the time again; he'd forgotten, and he also couldn't remember that he had a phone in his pocket too and could have checked himself. Piotr answered with a yawn, rolled his wide shoulders. In the moment of silence afterward, as the elevator hummed and beeped, Joel was filled with admiration for him. Ordinary, unnecessary kindness. Joel himself knew that he would never do something even this simple for one of the other kids in the mansion. Not because he didn't want to, but because he was afraid. Afraid of doing something wrong, afraid of making some little slip that would embarrass him. The fear of receiving so much as an odd look had kept him from -- from everything, he realised, everything.

Piotr strolled down the hall, waited as Joel fished his key out of his pocket and opened the door. "Hey, no roommate. You're lucky."

"I guess." He was suddenly aware of his body, the stale smell of the air in his room and the warm, clean smell of Piotr standing behind him. Wool and Ivory soap, and a sweetish tang of something he couldn't identify. Just sweat, perhaps, the smell of human flesh at the end of the day. Aware that this hypersensitivity was sometimes an aura, he sat down on the bed, listening within until he was sure that his brain wasn't going to go under again.

He tried to smile at Piotr, but he knew that his nervousness was visible. "Thanks, man, seriously."

"No problem, dude. My uncle used to have seizures so I know the drill, no big deal. You're okay?"

"Yeah."

"Awesome. Have a good night." Piotr closed the door soundlessly behind him.

Joel sat still on the bed, wondering why these things were simultaneously so easy and so hard. Then the last few minutes came loose from their moorings, and he forgot exactly why he was still awake. Like patting down his pockets to be sure of what was inside: a seizure, yes, that explained the headache that was now starting to pierce the backs of his eyeballs. No wonder the room looked strange: he was in Westchester. _Everything will be all right,_ said the inner voice, the one he always trusted, though it often didn't speak. He'd been thinking of snow at home, but here there was only a sucking black emptiness in the sky.

Emptiness. If he knew anything he knew what that was -- but he had always missed the point of it, even though it was so easy, so clear.

* * *

A driving rain was falling outside, drumming on the windows like handfuls of stones. Charles had one of the windows cracked open in his office, to get the freshness of the rain in the air after the long winter. Joel looked a little weatherbeaten, pale but alert —- present, not lost in his own thoughts as he often was in session. A dab of paste from the EEG electrodes was still on one temple.

"So the seizures are back," said Charles quietly. Henry had told him, but even if they hadn't, it was obvious from the telepathic taste of the boy's mind. Charles was a neurological connoisseur, and the shocky salt flavour of the postictal brain was as unmistakeable as horseradish.

"I think they never left," said Joel. "Maybe Dr. McCoy was right, and all those times I lost control of my power were just a type of seizure. It makes sense."

"Perhaps."

"So that means learning to control my power just made me more prone to seizures, right? And now I get to choose which I'd rather have."

"I think that's a false dilemma," said Charles. " _Because_ you're solid more often now, I think we have a better chance of finding an epilepsy medication that works. It's hard to try treatments for physical issues when half the time the patient isn't physical. But there's nothing particularly exotic about your seizures, from what I understand -- you have them because you had meningitis, not because you're a mutant. Finding a treatment plan that works will take time, but it's not impossible. Isn't that better, as an option three? You can continue to control your power, and also treat your epilepsy?"

And Joel, _mirabile dictu_ , actually nodded and agreed. No arguments, no sullen silences or veiled suicide threats. Despite his gloomy talk, a calm radiated from him, solid and lulling. Charles could sense an arborescent tangle of thought, like the wild grape and ivy that grew on the back fence his own backyard in Rockcliffe Park, and the tender all-encompassing calm settled easily in drifts like the snow. Charles pushed back very slightly, and the snowdrifts fell away. Joel felt the touch, and looked a question at him.

"You're broadcasting," Charles observed. "You seem very peaceful."

"I actually--" began Joel, and he hesitated, not in nervousness but just to choose his words. "Before I had the actual seizure, there was this strange feeling...not the aura, not the usual sort of thing at all. I mean I do get an aura, but that's different, it's just a sound. But this -- I felt like I was out of my body, out of everything, not myself. I can't explain it. It was beautiful. Everything is so delicate, there's so much space around it..."

He trailed off, looking distracted, and suddenly his eyes were shining with tears. He reached for the box of tissues. "Sorry, wow. I get weepy after the big seizures."

"It's all right," said Charles.

Joel smiled, a warm, genuine smile. It transfigured his face, a light kindled from within. "You'd laugh if I said anything more about it, probably. No one my age knows how to talk about that kind of thing without sounding like a stoner. Maybe if I were like, ninety, it'd sound right. But it was -- it was beautiful."

Charles made a note: _Depersonalization prior to seizure, euphoria?_ "Tell me more about it?"

Joel did; it sounded to Charles like a more involved version of the drop into the Aphanes, all winter bitterness and isolation, culminating in an ultimate emptiness. Yes, said Joel, exactly.

"But you always hated that feeling."

"I understand what it means now," said Joel. The tears were running down his face, but his quiet voice was steady and matter-of-fact. "Being invisible is just nothingness, knowing and feeling and having and being nothing. And I realised that if you never had anything, if there was nothing to have, but then there's _something_ and it's small and weak, and the nothingness was pressing in around it, and it was all alone -- except for you -- you would love it, you'd love it more than anything. That's how we are, we're so small. God is poor, He only has us. We have everything and He has one thing, one thing to protect against all of the nothing. That's what it means."

He took a breath and wiped his face, staring upward at the ceiling to stop the tears. "I wish I wasn't crying. It probably makes me look crazy."

And in fact Charles was on the lookout for psychosis or mania, which was not unknown in some epileptic patients immediately after seizures...and which might explain some of the paranoid episodes at St. Rita's recorded in Visineau's file. But even if Charles had possessed the _sangfroid_ necessary to stomp all over a kid's quasi-mystical experience, there was no need. "I actually think you're demonstrating quite a lot of insight. So no, you don't seem detached from reality to me. I'll let you know if I do see any warning signs, don't worry."

"Right."

"What are you feeling?"

"I don't know. I feel like I've got Stendhal syndrome or something."

Charles had to laugh. "Stendhal syndrome?" 

"Yeah, like with the art galleries." Joel was laughing too, looking down at the balled up tissue in his hands.

"What, did you go to Florence to see the great works of art over the weekend? And you didn't invite me? Very inconsiderate. --No, please, tell me what you mean."

"I feel like it's the same idea, though?" Joel said. "Freaking out because something's so beautiful. Worn out and overstimulated, hysterical for no good reason."

"On the contrary, Stendhal in Florence has a very good reason for his symptoms. He is in the presence of works that have shaped his psyche from childhood. Things that he is privileged to see in person, to meet them face to face after they've been lingering at the back of the mind for decades. When we come in direct contact with our origins, with beauty and the sacred thrown into the mix, it's not surprising that the body responds as well as the mind. I think you're too inclined to forget about your body, until it gets your attention with seizures and blackouts."

"You sound like you're gonna make me do yoga or something."

"Well, you could do worse. It's nice to hear a bit of normal teenager backtalk from you, actually. You seem more alive. Stendhal syndrome is a temporary phase, not even a setback. Just a sensitive time for you, nothing wrong with that. If you need some relief from it, perhaps you ought to go to a multiplex and eat some McDonalds food, to get your mind off beauty and the sacred altogether. But you seem to be carrying your Florentine gallery inside your head."

"This is the first time in years that I might be able to go to a multiplex, you know. I feel...I feel _okay._ "

Only the sick could say that word with such reverence, Charles thought. All the delights of Beatrice's heaven. "Only okay?"

"Happy, maybe. I'm not sure what happy's like, for grown-ups. I remember when I was eleven, I was in a dentist's office reading some celebrity interview, and this actor was saying 'I'm not a happy guy, I don't know what that's like.' And I thought that was such bullshit. My life wasn't great then, I was getting kicked around at school a lot, but it never occurred to me to say I didn't know what happy meant. But I don't, now."

"I think the answer will come to you," said Charles. "For now, we won't aim for happy, if the word is too vague. We'll aim for healthy, where nothing hurts very much and you can get up and do your work every day. And from that vantage point, you might be able to see what happy would look like, for you."

"I hope so."

And he did -- Charles could feel it, a little green shoot in the Arctic night.


	16. Toute en Splendeur

_So instead of succumbing to my homesickness I told myself:_  
_your land, your fatherland, is all around. So instead of giving in to despair_  
_I chose active melancholy, in so far as I was capable of activity, in other words_  
_I chose the kind of melancholy that hopes, that strives and that seeks,_  
_in preference to the melancholy that despairs numbly and in distress._  
—Vincent Van Gogh

When Joel arrived in Ottawa in April he was startled to learn that his mother was staying in the Glebe with Aunt Carmel and Nana. "I'll be getting rid of the house, I think," she said as they drove from the airport into town. "Three stories and that huge yard...you know I love that garden, but it's ridiculous for me to live there alone. The taxes are criminal on that place. We could justify paying for help when Jim was -- was here, because he had a lifestyle to keep up. Image is a real business expense, in politics. But there's no reason now. I'm not a Senator's wife anymore."

She was right, but somehow it made Joel angry, that the CFH hadn't just taken his father but also his home, and this second, unexpected loss struck him hard in the stomach.

"But I'll stay in the city," his mother continued. "I know you like it better than the suburbs. Sometimes I think we shouldn't have moved from Tunney's Pasture to begin with."

"What, because of me?"

"You seemed happier."

"Aw, geez, Mom..."

"No?"

"No, I was happy. It's just..." He sighed. "There's not that much difference between Tunney's Pasture and Rockcliffe Park, c'mon. I didn't get sick because we moved. Don't think like that."

Maybe you could trace the line of it back -- at least as far as the vector of the meningitis, the other boy at school who died of it, who left his germs in the water fountain. Joel knew the boy's name, Will Downie, and thought of him sometimes as a tutelary spirit, a patron saint, and sometimes as one of those ghostly other selves that stalked his dreams. _Someone I could have been._ But things were going sour before that, long before.

"I wonder if the house might be a good place for you to -- do your work?" his mother asked, sounding hopeful. "Four bedrooms, and you could convert the upstairs family room to another two and get a couple more in the basement."

That was tempting, but Joel didn't have to think about it long. "It's not very accessible. Too many stairs, and OC Transpo doesn't go anywhere that part of town. Rockcliffe Park doesn't even have sidewalks, it's not friendly to pedestrians. And Paul says things are worse for mutants in Quebec, so I want to be where the need is. And I've wanted..."

"You want to be away from home."

"That's part of it," he admitted.

As much as he loved his city, _his_ , the tiny Gothic-towered capital nestled in its dairy fields and marshes, reserved and civil and white-knuckled -- he wanted to be elsewhere. There was nowhere in Ottawa he could go that he wouldn't be surrounded by a whirlpool of O'Briens threatening to suck him down, to do everything for him and choke off any attempt he made to learn for himself. They all still saw him as the sick relative, and they were trained to swarm the unfortunate with comforts. It had saved his life; Joel couldn't imagine rotting away in St Rita's for years the way Paul had done, seeing his family once a year and grudgingly. But it was too much.

"I won't be gone," he said to his mother. "But I'd rather be away."

It wasn't a holiday, but it felt like one as and his mother arrived at Aunt Carmel's house. When they opened the door a roar went up from the golden-lit living room and a stream of relatives emerged into the hallway to greet them. The windows downstairs were open and the smokers were out on the patio, the kids in the basement.

Dinner was, as usual, sumptuous. Aunt Carmel was serving chicken in a savoury sauce with light, fluffy dumplings and steamed asparagus, roasted new potatoes, and English peas. The table was extended with both its leaves to seat everyone, and the younger kids had a table in the kitchen, drinking Pepsi instead of wine and occasionally popping into the dining room to complain of some injustice. The rolls emerged triumphantly from the oven and arrived wrapped in white linen napkins, followed by the gravy in its silver boat. When everything was on the table, the kids had to gather in the dining room doorway as Father Mike, the former provincial of the Oblates and one of Joel's uncles, said grace.

"I wish we had something a little more special," fussed Carmel as everyone started eating. "I had no idea everyone would be in town at once, although I should have guessed, with the election."

"It's a referendum, not an election. They made absentee voting such a pain in the arse that I thought to hell with it, I'll just come back early," Aunt Grace complained. "Thought I was real smart getting a second week of vacation time in Florida this year."

"I don't even know what that thing is about," Brendan said petulantly. He was younger than Robin but older than Joel, and generally considered the shiftless one in the family. "I read the little thing, the booklet at the polling station? I couldn't figure out what either side wanted."

"So what did you vote?" Joel asked.

"I didn't, I felt weird about it so I just left."

"Wow, that's weirdly responsible of you," said Robin, lifting the crystal lid off the butter dish. "Good job, Bren. Would've been better if you'd known enough to vote no, but hey."

"Too bad I didn't have you following me into the voting booth, I guess."

"Too bad you didn't. I could do that for a living, professional vote advisor. Is that legal? It's probably not legal." Robin smeared his roll with a thick layer of butter. "Is it too much to ask that you give a shit when it's something that affects our own family?"

"So I guess now we're screwed, eh? I've wrecked the country beyond repair because I wasn't cool enough to hang around my dorm room reading _Jacobin_ like you do."

"Brendan, grow up. You have any idea what a conservative government can do with that amendment? They could send Joel off to the nuthouse for life if they felt like it. Or, y'know, jail."

The table, which had been abuzz with many conversations, suddenly grew quieter, and Robin coloured a little. "Sorry, sorry, that was not an okay word to use. I was being ableist. But involuntary committal is an actual issue."

There were no mutants on the O'Brien side of the family, so they all assumed the gene came from the McCree side. 

"The point is," said Robin, "it's beyond their jurisdiction to talk about healthcare and standards of competence. Isn't it? That stuff's provincial. And the stuff in the amendment that _is_ okay is all rehashed Charlottetown."

"I voted yes on Charlottetown," said Uncle David, in his usual tones of barely-restrained aggression. No one took his ire very seriously, and Joel had given up trying to understand his contradictory politics. "It deserved a second chance."

"Dad, for real. It was a mess then and it's a mess now. I only say it's okay because it's just pointless and sort of racist, rather than immediately dangerous to members of my own family." Robin turned to Joel. "You get me, right?"

"I guess, yeah."

"You voted no?"

"Don't ask people how they voted," said Simon.

"He doesn't have to answer, I'm just curious."

"It doesn't matter. You don't do it."

"I mean, I don't want to let my privilege blind me here," Robin said, ignoring the groans of everyone else at the table. "I was telling everybody at work, my cousin's a mutant, and he's completely harmless--"

"I voted no, Robin, Jesus."

No one tisked at him, not even Father Mike, who was shaking his head and going back to his chicken. Robin was mollified. "Good."

"You know it doesn't matter much to us, right?" Joel said, more quietly, after everyone else started talking again. "I don't want it to pass, but it's not like the status quo is so much better."

"It's all we can do, though. Isn't it?"

"For now. Yeah. But just -- if it passes, don't worry. It'll be all right."

After dinner and tea, most of the guests left and Robin and Brendan went upstairs with Joel to watch the returns. Joel was drowsy, under the influence of all that food on top of his usual drugs, and fell asleep sometime during the segment entitled _Mutants in Canada: Menace or Illness?_ Later, he cracked an eyelid upon hearing his own surname, and saw that they were recapping the CFH attacks.

_"Some commentators saw Sherbrooke's announcement of Constitution talks as a capitulation to the CFH, while others worried that a vote against the Gatineau Accords would result in further violence. Western alienation..."_

"Isn't there like an indie band called Western Alienation?" said Brendan.

Robin thought about that, fumbling for his can of pop on the floor. "Yeah, I think they opened for Cuff the Duke once."

The camera was doing a slow pan across a file photo of Joel's father in his office, shuffling papers and looking serious, the sort of thing they used to use for campaign literature. _Jim McCree, at work for you_ and similar lame slogans. _"Although Sherbrooke brought in an elite mutant task force from the United States to aid the RCMP in capturing the CFH members, chaos erupted at the scene..."_

"Do we have to watch this?" asked Joel. "This isn't exactly news."

It was early yet, and the numbers on the crawl at the bottom of the screen were already at 42% in favour to 13% against. The referendum required 50% plus one. "Landslide, I bet," said Robin. "Fuck."

Brendan changed the channel to a _Simpsons_ rerun.

* * *

Robin was right. The Gatineau Accords passed muster with the Canadian people (the 69% who bothered to vote, anyway) by a whopping 76%. While the Constitution wouldn't change for five years yet, mutant Facebook groups and Tumblr tags were gloomy and Professor Xavier himself released a statement the next day decrying the move.

On Sunday, Joel took the train to Montreal to meet Paul and see some houses. On the way he fell down the rabbithole of Twitter and CBC, scrolling through the news stories on his phone and using more of his data plan than he liked to. Most of the actual media commentators approved of the Accords. Dangerous mutant stories got clicks, and the articles were full of them, some citing cases going back to the '70s. It was depressing, but Joel could still imagine his father standing in the kitchen doorway in his shirtsleeves, raising one hand as if in benediction and saying, _"Nothing is forever, not even the Constitution. We can soften the blow. We will. Government's made of people, not laws."_ Even now, Joel thought, he could stitch together his father from memory, prop him up in the frightening corners of Joel's own mind like a scarecrow. It should have been only a thin comfort, but at least he _had_ enough of his father to do this -- so many people didn't. The spectral other selves that wandered through his mind all turned their heads. _You're lucky. You're lucky in spite of everything, in spite of it all._

Joel got off the train at the Gare Centrale, and wandered through the big high-ceilinged terminal for a few minutes before he found Paul waiting near the metro-card machine. Paul looked good; his silky dark hair was freshly cut, and his raincoat looked new. Paul hated the eye-catching nature of his mutation so much that it was always a good sign when he was willing to show up in public, and when he bothered to take care of his appearance. Seeing Joel, his skin lit up in red and gold, with darting flashes of silvery violet underneath like tiny fish. They nearly hugged, but then Joel stopped and Paul just touched his shoulder awkwardly instead.

"You look amazing," said Joel, and bit the inside of his cheek. _Too strong. Don't be weird._ "Um -- I thought you weren't going out without your makeup anymore?"

"Nah. The good stuff is really expensive, the Dermacolor." He sometimes used special makeup made for covering up serious birthmarks and scars. It did the job, but covering every inch of visible skin took a lot of product. "And the cheaper stuff isn't strong enough. No point in looking any weirder than I have to, but I only get to be normal on special occasions." He sounded nonchalant, but as they left the terminal he positioned himself on Joel's far side, staying close to the wall.

"It's not dangerous here, is it?" Joel asked quietly.

"Not in this neighbourhood," Paul admitted. "A lot of freaks like us in downtown. Some areas...it can be sketchy. And residential areas like NDG and Outremont will give you the stinkeye if you don't look normal. But the houses you're looking at are all in the Plateau, so that's fine."

Paul did not seem particularly comforted by this, and Joel prompted. "Still, though...?"

"Still." He shrugged. "I'm paranoid, you know that. It's not far enough to get the metro, you want to walk?"

"We'll take a cab," said Joel, knowing that Paul's mutation made him sensitive to cold.

They took a pleasantly overheated cab through the snowy streets of downtown. The driver was an African immigrant, and only gave Paul a brief curious look before asking the destination in elegant French.

Watching the traffic pass, Paul said, "It's the _pure laine_ types who are freaking out about the danger to the community, and losing our children to the mutant menace. Because right now, if you want to run away from home to reach mutant freedom, you go to Toronto or you go the States. Either way, _Anglais._ Everything always boils down to that here."

Paul counted as _pure laine_ himself, an uncomfortable term that referred to being old stock French, descended from the original settlers of New France. Joel hadn't considered the language issue. "There's seriously no big mutant community here?"

"Oh, you know. There's a scene, but it's small. A kid who already has to leave home, if he speaks English he'll probably say fuck it and go to Toronto. Better chance of getting a job, more mutants, more everything. Not that Montreal is small, but culturally? Francophone Canada's a small pond. There's a lot of North America out there to see. That's what I'd do, anyway," he added. "But I never officially got kicked out. I'm being tolerated."

Joel sighed. "Are they happy about winning the referendum?"

"Elated. You have no idea. The Gatineau Accord was full of toys for the separatists, so yeah, everyone here feels like they pulled something over on Ottawa. And it was just the right note to strike -- no one wants to be mean to mutants just for the sake of it, but _dangerous_ mutants and _crazy_ mutants, of course, lock them up without trial before they do anything they regret." Bitter pine green and burnt orange flashed over his skin. "So it's a good time for a rich eccentric like you to come to our rescue, Batman."

Joel laughed, but let the topic of politics drop, always feeling rude about discussing that stuff in a cab. The driver was a captive audience, just like they were, and life was just better when neither party started talking about controversial stuff. For a long time there was only the exhale of the heater and the ticking of the turn signal. The tires made a thick slushy sound in the remains of the snow.

The cab stopped on Rue Sainte Famille, in the student ghetto area around McGill. The street was sloped, and the property was banked with high limestone walls so that the greystone house seemed to perch a full storey above street-level, fortress-like. It was a duplex with three storeys and a low-pitched roof, flights of stone steps leading through twin archways in the wall up to the front doors.

"This is certainly imposing," said Joel, as they climbed the steps. "Who's going to shovel these? You can't get a snowblower over this. And what if someone needs crutches or a wheelchair?"

"You have no soul, and there's an accessible entrance from the back. It's a beautiful place, especially inside."

"What, you've already seen it?"

"Mom took me around yesterday." Paul's mother was a real estate agent, and Joel had sent him a list of likely houses for her to vet. "We saw the other places, but this is the one, trust me. A wonderful Victorian house, _toute en splendeur._ "

It was one of those French phrases that Joel was uncertain about. "'All in splendour?'"

Paul gestured vaguely. "You know, beautiful, in good condition, everything at its finest, the way it should be. 'In all its glory', maybe?"

"Oh. So how much does splendour cost these days?"

"Get ready."

"I'm ready."

"Five hundred and fifty thou is the asking price."

"For a _duplex?_ Here? Are you fucking shitting me?"

"Never."

"What the fuck is wrong with it?"

"Nothing, far as we could tell."

"Is it haunted?"

"Maybe. I didn't see it at night."

Joel shook his head in disbelief and Paul rang the doorbell. Five hundred and fifty thousand was unbelievable; they practically had to take it. Joel had budgeted $1.2 million as his maximum, and prices went up to over three million in downtown and the Golden Mile. And he wanted to be in the thick of the city, along with the homeless and everyone else who was in trouble. The suburbs hid too much, and didn't welcome those who couldn't hide.

The landlady was a plump Colombian woman who spoke good English and passable French, so she addressed Joel in a cheerful up-and-down Spanish accent as she marched through the house. "The kitchen is a little small for cooking, but the pantry is very big. Or you could convert to a little bathroom. But the last tenants used for a pantry, and the storage is very good..."

It was, as Paul had said, a beautiful house, with stained glass inserts in French doors and bay windows looking over the backyard (which was, admittedly, just a pile of dead leaves and a broken motorcycle), hardwood floors and Victorian mouldings everywhere. There were no balconies, a classic feature of Montreal houses, but each side of the duplex had six bedrooms, and there was a finished basement besides. A lot of stairs, but there were bedrooms and bathrooms on the ground level, and the doorways were wide enough.

"Twelve people," Paul said, when the landlady left them in the living room to take a phone call. "Well, eleven. Maybe four more in the basements — fifteen. We can keep fifteen people off the street."

Joel turned from the living room window, feeling a rush of hope. "We?"

"Well -- it's not so far from Longueuil. By metro."

Longueuil was close enough by car, but like Joel, Paul had never got his driver's license. The metro did go out that way, but it wasn't a convenient trip at all. "It kind of is, though. Are you..."

Paul glanced at him, then looked back up down at the radiators with their fancy floral grating. "I could help you out, with whatever...it's a lot of work, I mean. Think of buying all that furniture, supervising the renovations, all of that. And you're still having seizures, you can't drive. I mean I don't either, but I could learn. I wouldn't mind. If you needed help, anyway."

Impulsively, Joel hugged him. It was an aggressive sort of embrace, taking Paul by surprise and requiring a determined follow-through on Joel's part. Their coats squeaked against each other. "Thanks."

"I didn't know if you'd ask."

"I would have, eventually. But thanks for doing it for me."

They broke apart. Joel met Paul's eyes and for a moment he felt uncomfortable, too visible, as if he were naked. Paul's skin was shining rosy gold, like a sunrise, a tremulous light shot through with a shifting opalescent radiance, a cloud or a jet trail.

It was the colour of happiness.

* * *

When Joel got back to the Xavier Institute, there was no snow cover left and the trees were budding, spring bulbs poking their green blades out of the flowerbeds. But Bobby was still into the hockey idea, and he'd made a level field of ice about the size of the rink at the Gardens. Far bigger than it needed to be, considering that it was only three on three, but Bobby was proud of the texture. "Bigger is harder to control, I'm challenging myself."

"Yeah, that's what she said," said Kitty.

They had a small audience of younger kids, who slid and rough-housed on the unused ice, lending half their attention to the game and clearly waiting for a teacher to shut the impromptu works down. The players included everyone who owned skates and more or less knew the rules. They all had cheap wooden sticks, purchased locally by Piotr with some money they'd pooled together. At the south end of the field were John, Piotr, and Sam Guthrie (unsteady on his skates and absolutely forbidden from body-checking), while Bobby, Joel, and Kitty Pryde were at the north end.

"I don't think this is fair," said Bobby. "No offence, Kitty--"

"I got my team to the nationals in junior high, _Bobby_ , so shut up."

"Look, I'm not being sexist, I'm just saying -- two people on my team might maybe let the puck phase through them. That's legit, right?"

Kitty glared at him and pulled her laces tight with a snap. Alone of all of them, she had actual pads and wore a Blackhawks jersey, while the rest were playing in street clothes. "I wonder if Mr. Summers might want to know that you're all playing without protective gear?"

"Okay, relax."

"No, hey, I'm just saying. Head injuries are serious business. He might want to come and ref the game, make sure there's no powers, no checking, no spitting, no foul language, penalties, a Lady Byng trophy at the end for the team with the best sportsmanship..."

"No teachers, c'mon," said John. "We might as well be playing badminton at that point."

"I already can't check," Sam complained.

"You guys have thirty seconds to get this sorted out before I go back inside," Piotr said from his position in the "net", which was just a rectangle of two-by-fours. "You don't want Kitty? We'll take her. You can have John."

"We're not stupid," Bobby shot back. "Fine, this is good. We're good. Winning isn't everything. McCree, you're goaltending."

"Maybe you should."

"I hate being goalie, c'mon. Kitty actually has pads, maybe she can do it."

"Yeah, I play centre, champ," Kitty said with dignity. "And _you're welcome_. --Here, Joel can have my gloves, though, if they'll fit."

They didn't, quite, but Joel took them anyway — big thick gauntlets, still smaller than proper goaltender gloves but better than nothing. He skated to the crease and they began.

Artie was chosen to drop the puck, so the faceoff was gentle, Bobby deferring to John in order to keep from hitting Artie in the legs. John took his advantage and began a swaggering trip across the blue line, but he was too slow and Kitty snapped the puck away again with a ferocious crack of sticks.

"Foul!" John shouted, shaking his stinging hand.

"No ref, no foul," Piotr announced from his net. "And she didn't touch you, you baby. Pick up the pace."

Sam made a half-hearted attempt to stop Kitty from flying past him, but he wobbled on his skates and nearly fell as she slammed a shot between Piotr's legs. Big five-hole.

"One nothing for the Intangibles!" she crowed. "You guys are going down."

"'The Intangibles?'" Bobby repeated. "That's terrible. What about me?"

Piotr, skating back to centre ice with the puck, said, "I hereby christen your side the Zambonis."

"Damn straight," Kitty said. "Stay off the ice when the Zamboni's going by."

"Ow, dude, that was so lame it physically hurt me," said John. "Who are we supposed to be?"

"The Piotr's-the-only-one-who-can-play team?" Bobby suggested. "The Soviet Republic of Losers? The, uh, Red Line Menace? I can come up with these all day."

"Please do, dying to hear them." Piotr returned to the crease. "Who's dropping the puck this time? Jubes?"

The play lasted longer this time, as Piotr managed to stop all of Kitty's shots while Bobby kept John distracted enough to keep him away from the puck. Joel was left alone at the north end of the ice, watching the little knot of moving bodies across the white expanse. The shearing sounds of the skate blades and the crack of the sticks against the puck made him feel as if he were on a rink in a park in Ottawa, hoping the puck wouldn't come across to him. Joel had never enjoyed playing hockey in those days, as the fat kid relegated to the dullest position in the game by other kids who held him in blatant contempt, and he wasn't sure he was enjoying it now. Not the game part, anyway. What he liked was the feeling that no one took any notice of him: nobody hated him, nobody minded his presence, nobody was even thinking about him very much. He wasn't sucking up other people's attention and patience. They acted like he was a normal sane person, one of them. Probably if anyone had asked, they would have even said they liked him. _McCree? Sure, he's fine._

Maybe that didn't sound like much, but it felt pretty great to him.

He thought of the Professor's description of health, "when nothing hurts very much", and thought that if there wasn't anything more to it than that, then he was healthy now. It was, however, a big if.

As usual, he was so spaced out that he barely noticed at first when John came rampaging down the ice with the puck. Too late, Joel realised where John was heading and tried to assume a goalie-ish posture. Close to the crease (far too close for Joel's comfort), John fired a slapshot at the goal, windmilling his stick back over his shoulder.

The puck flew up and hit Joel hard in the nose, and his vision went red and black. Distantly he heard Kitty yelling "Hiiiiigh-stickiiinnng, motherfucker!"

"You said we weren't doing penalties," John said, voice smaller than usual.

"Penalties, hell. Don't hit like that when the goalie doesn't have a mask, dumbass, it's not rocket science."

A pinprick of silence, as if someone was holding him underwater.

"Joel?" Kitty was repeating his name. "Are you okay?"

Blood was dripping onto the ice and he wasn't sure he knew the answer to that question. He hadn't fallen or anything, but he recognised that weird little silence as a complex partial seizure. It might not repeat itself, or he might have 50 in an hour like in high school, when everyone used to call him the Zombie. _Fuck this,_ Joel thought. He was cold. He should go inside, go to bed, lie down with his headphones on and zone out as much as he wanted. Ice at his head and hot water bottle at his feet. Door closed. It could still be a quiet afternoon.

Kitty was looking nervous now, so he answered her. "Yeah -- yeah, I'm fine, I dunno. Maybe I should head in. I'm not exactly an asset to the team here."

"Aw, come on. You stopped the shot, didn't you?"

"Seriously, Kitty."

"Don't be a quitter -- you gonna let a punk like John chase a real Canadian off the ice? Let me see it, I think it's just blood."

He let Kitty examine him. She peered into his face, her long brown hair blowing around her windstung cheeks, and touched his nose lightly with her pinky. He was solid and he could feel it. The sun was out, but Bobby's ice stayed cold, and the air on the rink was chilly, Kitty's fingertip strangely warm. The touch didn't spook him. He didn't disappear.

"Just bloody, I think," she said. "How's your head? You know what day it is, who's the President, you're not dizzy?"

"Saturday, McKenna, and no." Joel touched his own nose and didn't feel any broken pieces, although his face was wet and cold with blood. He took one glove off, found a tissue deep in his pocket and wiped it away. Sometimes you just had to let the puck hit you. "Yeah, you're right. I'm okay."

They returned to play, and the little silences did not come back, and the bleeding stopped, and amazingly enough, nothing hurt very much.

* * *

"You can still return to the school next term if you wish," the Professor was saying. It was late in June, and the seniors at Xavier's School were getting ready to graduate -- they were preparing for the whole ceremony, so that all the kids would have the opportunity to go through the normal, goofy ritual of robes and mortarboards. Just like anyone else. Joel didn't plan to be among them, still behind on schoolwork, but he was used to being out of step with other kids and it didn't bother him.

"I'm thinking of just taking the GED test, actually," Joel said. It was their last session of the school year. "McGill doesn't accept it but UdeM does, Université de Montréal. I was only thinking of McGill because my dad went there, but that's not really important."

"And what would you like to study?"

"I don't know. I used to always say history, because I like history and it makes people stop asking the question, but I don't know if I feel, like, a pressing need to do a whole degree. Maybe religious studies or something."

"Really?"

"Yeah, like...I want to study something that'll be useful for the house, but useful for _me_ to know -- does that make sense? Like there's no point in trying to become a social worker, I'd just suck balls at that." All the social workers Joel had known were remarkable people, but just looking at their desks made him anxious. "I can't offer that to other people. But I feel like...I don't know. Getting a better grip on what I think about religion would give me a clearer idea of what I'm really doing. Like I'd be a bad therapist but I think I could be a good Catholic Worker."

"Say more about that," said Dr. Xavier. "What is it that you want to offer other people?"

"You're just trying to trick me into saying nice things about myself."

"Absolutely, and until 9:50 you have to oblige me."

Joel slumped back in his chair, but he was smiling. "This is hard. Um. What _do_ I bring to the table? Money?"

The Professor chuckled. "Well, let's phrase that more positively. You have a willingness to give, and a willingness to be personally involved with the work of giving. You weren't satisfied with just writing a cheque or establishing a foundation that someone else would run. You wanted to do it yourself."

"Yeah. I just felt -- I wanted to really build something. Writing a cheque and handing it over would have been...like cheating myself out of something, maybe." Almost the right words, but not quite. "That makes it sound like it's all about me."

"It's not self-centred to acknowledge the fact that you have your own motivations."

"No, I don't have the right words yet. Give me a second." Once Joel would have just faded out and given up on the frustration of articulating things that were personal, embarrassing, and vague. But now he'd learned that if he asked the Professor for a minute to think, he'd get his minute -- no pushing or prodding for an answer before it was ready. Finally he said, "If I just gave the money away, I would have been giving away a responsibility. Because I know what I want, I know what kind of place I want to _exist_ for mutants. So if I gave that away to somebody else, they might do fine with it. They might do a better job than I will. But I'd feel like a deadbeat dad or something, I'd feel like I should have been there."

The Professor smiled. "You have a vision."

"Oh God."

"Don't get embarrassed, don't back away from it. You're absolutely right. You'd feel like an absentee parent because ideas are very much like children, and they need personal attention. Do you feel ready to lead that sort of existence with other people?" the Professor asked. 

"I'll have Paul there with me, so yeah," said Joel. "I have a lot of social stuff to work on, but I'm getting better. I'm living with other people _now_ ," he pointed out.

"That's true. Playing some very unseasonable hockey games on Saturdays, I've noticed."

"Bobby won't quit until he wins one."

"You've really done remarkable work over these months, you know. I'm proud of you," said the Professor.

"Uh, _you_ did remarkable work," Joel said, looking up. "I only really kicked my ass into gear this spring."

"If I had been the only one working, you wouldn't have improved at all. Give yourself that much credit. You had your own experiences and derived your own insights from them."

Silence.

"Maybe," Joel said quietly. "Yeah." 

He glanced up at the clock and fumbled with the pocket of his hoodie. He was always terrible at giving cards or gifts, awkward with the gesture and only finding pleasure in it after the fact -- actually handing the thing over and being thanked made him feel like he was being mocked, like everyone was noticing how smooth he wasn't. This was just a card in an envelope, so he got up and gave it to the Professor.

"May I?" Dr. Xavier said, opening the envelope's unsealed flap. "Or should I read it later?"

"No, now. Now is fine, yeah."

It was one of Joel's old white index cards from St. Rita's that he used to use for communication, its edges softened by time and handling, dog-eared at one corner. In Dr. Visineau's handwriting, the label said _Thank you._

Joel's note on the back was brief:

_Dear Dr. Xavier,  
Thank you for sticking with me._

There was more than that to be grateful for, and more than that to be said, but this time Joel thought he could trust the silence to speak for him. It didn't have to be empty. It could be full.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, you made it! Thanks for reading. Comments are much appreciated, but like, obviously. Everyone likes comments, right?
> 
> The story continues with _The Heart's Landscape_ as Joel and Paul run their mutant safe house in Montreal. [Read on!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4157352)


End file.
